Raising Hellion
by Dulcineah
Summary: Addison cheated on Derek with Sam instead of with Mark. AU. Addison/Sam, Addison/Derek.
1. Chapter 1

She saw Sam as soon as she entered the clinic. His picture beamed out at her from the cover of his book, although he was nowhere to be seen, and Addison took a moment to stare at the display, trying not to groan at how her old friend was now 'Dr. Feelgood'. She'd gotten a great deal of amusement out of that fact two months ago in New York, but it wasn't so funny now that she'd experienced it for herself. The sex had been great, but the aftermath was anything but pretty.

She shook her head and approached the receptionist, a shaggy blond guy who couldn't have been more than twenty-three. "Hi, uh, I hope I'm in the right place." She glanced around in hopes of sighting the real Sam. "I'm looking for--"

Addison broke off as she caught sight of the familiar-looking young girl in the waiting area. The last time she'd seen Maya, the girl had been eight and obsessed with horses, and now she'd grown up seemingly overnight. "Maya, is that you?"

"Addison!" Maya exclaimed, looking thrilled to see her and Addison didn't know whether to feel relieved or guilty. Sam and Naomi obviously hadn't told their daughter about what had happened in New York, and Addison felt like the worst friend ever knowing that she was responsible for the dissolution of Maya's family.

"Oh my God, look at you! You've gotten so big!" Addison grinned at the girl, getting a shy smile in response. "What are you, like, forty-five now?"

"Maya, you're going to be late for school." Naomi entered on the scene suddenly, stiffening as she caught sight of Addison. She looked tired and sad, and Addison marveled at how much it was possible to wound your best friend when you never wanted to hurt her at all. "What are you doing here?"

"Naomi." Addison forced a smile and held out her arms. "Surprise!" She hugged a shell-shocked Naomi, grateful that her friend hadn't called security and had her thrown out. Yet.

Naomi turned to her daughter. "Maya, go get your backpack." The girl left and she turned back to Addison, her arms crossed against her chest. "So, what do you want, Addison?"

She wanted lots of things, none of which were possible to have anymore. She wanted not to have slept with Sam, not to have wrecked her marriage and especially not to have ruined Naomi's. "I want to talk."

"Really?" Naomi raised an eyebrow, her eyes betraying her struggle to maintain her composure. Her friend seldom lost control, but Addison could see her friend's hurt and anger threatening to break through the surface. "Because before now, I hadn't heard from you in a year, unless you count two months ago when you betrayed our friendship by screwing my husband."

"Addison." She turned around to see Sam staring uneasily at her, a wary look in his eyes that made Addison feel unexpectedly sad. Sam and Naomi had been two of her very best friends, and now that was gone. Not like Sam was entirely blameless in this, she reminded herself. She hadn't exactly had to tie him down while she had her wicked way with him.

"Hey," she greeted him, giving him a careful hug, conscious of Naomi's eyes on her. Sam hugged her back, awkwardly, and Addison wondered if he was as angry with her as Naomi was. "It's so good to see you, but," she picked up one of the books, "your face is everywhere." She paused, hoping to get a smile at her joke, from either of them, but neither looked like they were finding much amusement in the situation.

This wasn't going to be easy.

"So Addison," Naomi continued, and Addison shrank back as she felt the other woman's eyes boring holes into her. "You never did say what you're here for, unless there's a convention for backstabbing ex-best friends going on in LA this week."

"Nai, I'm so sorry," Addison pleaded, feeling her eyes begin to brim with tears. She forced them back and breathed in deeply, willing herself to get through this conversation. Of course Naomi was hurt and angry. Wouldn't she have been if she were in her position, if Naomi had slept with Derek?

"You're sorry you betrayed our friendship and slept with my husband? Yeah, I'm sorry too." Her friend's voice sounded like it was going to break and if this conversation wasn't finished in thirty seconds then Addison thought she really might cry. She cast a mute appeal to Sam but he just stood there, looking uneasily between her and Naomi as if he were afraid they were going to turn on him next.

Addison sighed, giving up hope of making things go any easier. It wasn't looking like Naomi was ever going to forgive her and things with Sam seemed pretty screwed up as well. She might as well get this over with so she could get back to Seattle and go on with her life.

"I'm pregnant."

*********

"So you're…" Sam's voice trailed off as he watched Addison pace around his office. She'd been walking from one side to the other for the last five minutes, ever since they'd gotten here. Naomi was probably holed up with Violet somewhere, Sam guessed, and he would have to go find her when he was finished talking with Addison. "You're pregnant."

Addison paused in her pacing to give him a dirty look. "I already said that, five minutes ago. You haven't said yet how you feel about it."

That was a good question. He was having any number of reactions to the news, but none of them summed up exactly how he felt on the issue. "You know I'm going to be here, Addison, whatever you decide to do."

She stopped pacing and was now glaring at him, looking truly pissed off. He'd seen Addison angry on a number of occasions, but seldom at him and he wasn't enjoying the prospect of it now. He knew she wanted an answer, but the fact was that he didn't *know*.

"Thanks for the non-answer, Sam, that's just what I needed. I'm so glad you're being so supportive, because I'm not scared or anything. It's not like my husband threw me out or won't return my phone calls or anything like that." She sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the box on his desk. "These are just allergies. Don't you think that I'm crying, because I'm not."

Derek had thrown Addison out? That was...Sam didn't know exactly what that was, but it definitely didn't seem like Derek. Granted, he hadn't talked to the guy all that much in recent years, and Addison had seemed so sad and lonely when he'd visited New York two months ago. Throwing his wife out didn't seem like Derek, though. He was more the type to leave himself, stealing out of New York under the cover of darkness and fleeing across the country.

"Hey, Addison, it's okay," he tried to assure her, stepping forward and pulling her into a hug. Her body was stiff and tense against his for a few seconds, then relaxed as he rubbed her back gently. "It's going to be okay, Addison. We're going to do this together."

"He left me, Sam, I ruined my marriage," Addison sniffled, burying her head in Sam's shoulder. He could feel her tears dripping onto his shirt as he held her, and he wished he knew what to say to her. "I've called him so many times, I've left I don't know how many voicemails, and he hasn't called back. It's been two months, and he hasn't called back."

"Maybe he's just busy," Sam offered weakly, regretting his words the moment hed said them. Add'ison pulled away quickly and looking at him with a mixture of hurt and fury that made him wish he'd just kept his mouth shut.

"'He's just busy?' That's why my husband won't talk to me? If Naomi slept with Derek, would you not call her because you had too much to do at the office?" She blew her nose and tossed the Kleenex into the trash can. "I betrayed him, Sam, I slept with his friend and I don't think he can forgive that. You didn't see what he was like after you left. He was…I don't know what he was, but he wasn't Derek."

"You're right, I'm sorry." Sam sat down in his chair, rubbing his forehead with one hand. God, this was a mess. He had one distraught woman in his office, another one somewhere around--most likely plotting violence against him--and no idea what he was going to do.

"I don't know what to do, Sam." Addison sank wearily into a chair, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees as she massaged her temple. "I'm barely sleeping, my appetite is next to nonexistent, and I know all this stress is bad for the baby, but I just…I'm at a loss here."

"Does Derek know about the baby?" Sam questioned gingerly, not wanting to set her off into another flood of tears. He'd never seen Addison fall apart like this and he wasn't sure what the right thing to do was. "Because you're going to have to tell him eventually, if you want to work things out."

"Yeah, of course Derek knows about the baby. He and I have been having long heart-to-hearts and he's fine with me having another man's child." Addison shook her head. "God, Sam, I know you're not stupid but you're certainly acting like it."

He felt a twinge of annoyance at her words. Okay, so maybe he was handling this badly, but he'd just found out fifteen minutes ago that he was going to be a father again, by a woman who wasn't Naomi, and that news was more than a little unsettling. He wanted to be home with his dog and figuring this whole mess out, but in the meantime he had to deal with Addison and Naomi and he had no idea how he was supposed to be doing that.

This conversation really wasn't going well. He was making a complete idiot out of himself, and he suspected that his talk with Naomi would be even more difficult, if she would even talk to him at all. That was later, though. For right now he had to reassure Addison that everything would be all right, even if he didn't believe it himself.

"How long have you known?" Sam asked, watching her reaction closely. Her eyes were still red when she looked at him, but she didn't seem to be crying anymore. This was good. Not crying was definitely an improvement.

"A little less than a week." Addison counted off on her fingers, then nodded. "Six days, to be exact. I wanted to be absolutely sure before I came to tell you."

Sam nodded, unsure as to what he should say. He looked down at his hands, aware of Addison's eyes on him as they both waited for him to do something.

********

"God, Violet, why do I let him do this to me?" Naomi choked back a sob and took another bite of cake, trying to enjoy the chocolaty taste in her mouth. Now this was much better. Cake didn't cheat on you with your best friend or get said best friend pregnant. She should have just enrolled in cooking school instead of marrying Sam all those years ago. Much less heartache in the long run.

"Okay, Naomi, step away from the cake." Her plate was unceremoniously snatched out of her hands and dumped in the trash can, and she turned to her friend with an accusatory stare. "Don't look at me like that, I'm just trying to help."

"My best friend is pregnant with my husband's baby and you're trying to help by taking away the chocolate?" Naomi sighed deeply, then handed over her fork. As much as she would like to find Sam and stab him with it, she had few doubts that Violet would tackle her if she did. She could probably best her in a fight, but Violet wasn't the one who had betrayed her.

"Come on, Naomi, use your words," Violet urged, taking hold of one of Naomi's hands and gripping it tightly. "Eating your troubles isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to be talking about this, with someone who can understand."

"You're right," Naomi decided, an idea suddenly occurring to her as she reached for her cell phone. "Let's call Addison's husband and tell him the happy news, shall we?"

"Naomi, wait!" Violet yelped, dropping Naomi's fork on the floor as she unsuccessfully grabbed for the receiver. "That's not what I meant when I said that you should use your words!"

"Why not?" Naomi challenged, stepping up onto the couch to hold the phone out of reach. "Derek should know about this, shouldn't he?" She scrolled through her contacts list until she found Derek's cell phone number. She had no idea if it was the same or not, but it was worth a try, wasn't it?

"Naomi, you don't want to do this." Violet reached for the phone, her voice calm and level in what Naomi privately thought as her friend's 'shrink voice'. It was effective for her patients, but Naomi wasn't a patient. Her best friend had fucked her husband and was pregnant with his baby, and she was entitled to be hurt and angry, wasn't she? "Just give me the phone, okay?"

"I don't think so." Naomi shook her head, pressing 'send' and holding the phone to her ear as she listened to it ring. One ring, two, three, and still nothing. She glanced at her watch--it was about seven in the evening in New York, and Derek should be done with work, although from what Addison had told her in the past, he seldom got home before ten or eleven at night.

"Naomi, give me the phone," Violet repeated, reaching her hand out as she made eye contact with her friend. Naomi looked away--she did feel slightly guilty about this, knowing that she was about to betray Addison (and why did she feel bad about that, when Addison had betrayed her first, in the cruelest manner possible?)--but the hurt was too strong and she continued to hold the phone to her ear, the ringing lulling her into a dull kind of trance.

The phone rang once more on the other end and then stopped, replaced by Derek's familiar voice. Maybe not so familiar anymore, Naomi thought to herself as she listened to the voicemail message informing her that Derek Shepherd was unavailable at the moment but that she should call the hospital if this was an emergency. The beep came just as Violet leapt toward her and lunged for the phone.

"What do you think you're doing?" Naomi hissed before turning her attention back to the phone. "Not you, Derek. Um, this is Naomi calling--"

"Give me the phone!" Violet tugged at her arm, trying to snatch the phone out of her grasp. "Trust me, you don't want to be doing this. You'll thank me later!"

"No. I. Won't." Naomi blocked her friend's renewed attempt to grab the phone as she stood on her tiptoes in the hopes that it would thwart Violet's efforts. "Sorry, Derek, it's a bit chaotic in here. Anyhow, I just wanted to congratulate you on the good news--"

"Naomi!" Violet was almost successful that time, knocking the phone out of Naomi's hand. They both reached for it, but Naomi got to it first and leapt up onto the coffee table, hoping that the height difference would give her the advantage'

"Addison came to visit and she told me about the baby, and I just wanted to say that I think it's great," Naomi finished, stepping down from the table at seeing Violet's stunned expression. She'd won this battle, but the victory wasn't as sweet as she'd thought it would be. "Anyhow, uh, yeah, I'm really happy for her."

She pressed 'end call', wishing she could take back her words. She hadn't accomplished anything besides hurting Derek, who hadn't done anything to her. Yes, this was really and truly a great day.

******

There was a strange woman crying in his office.

Cooper's first thought was that she was one of the girls from the internet that he'd slept with, although that was silly since he didn't make a practice of telling his sexual partners where he worked, and tracking a one night stand to his place of employment was rather weird, bordering on the creepy. But he was pretty sure he'd never seen this woman before, which still left the question of who she was and why she was in his office.

"Uh, can I help you?" He leaned against the doorframe, his hands shoved in his pockets, and most likely looking as awkward as he felt. If the girl had been seven then he would have known exactly what to do, but apart from Violet, he wasn't so good with the interacting with women his own age. Hence the sleeping with random women from the internet and not having an actual relationship in he didn't even know how long.

The woman looked up at him, and he could see the mascara running down her face. Her eyes were red and puffy and she must have been in here for quite some time. "I'm sorry, is this your office? You must have patients to see." She stood up and grabbed a Kleenex from the box on the his desk and blew her nose. "I'll get out of your way."

"Actually, I don't have any patients for another hour, so you can stay a bit if you want to, and finish…" Cooper trailed off, not wanting to say 'crying', since that sounded weird. "Um, what you're doing in here."

"You mean crying?" The woman smiled faintly, sitting back down on the couch and Cooper knew she was going to stay. "It's okay, you can say it. It's only the truth."

"Can I get you anything?" Cooper offered, looking toward the kitchen and back at her. "Coffee or tea or water? Or there might be something else in the fridge, but I can check."

"Tea would be wonderful, thank you." She helped herself to another Kleenex and wiped her face with it, which had the unfortunate effect of smearing the mascara all over her cheeks.

"I"ll go get you some," Cooper promised, starting to leave before turning back to her, hesitating as if not sure whether to say it or not. "Um, the ladies room is down the hall if you want to freshen up a bit while I'm gone."

He didn't know if she would be offended by that, since women could be sensitive about how they looked, but she only gave him that faint smile again. "I think I'll do that, then. Thank you…" she trailed off. "I don't know your name."

"Cooper. Cooper Freedman, that is, but you can call me Cooper." He shut up, aware that he was about to start rambling, which wouldn't go over so well. Not like he was looking to impress this woman, but it would be nice if he didn't act like he had no social skills whatsoever.

"Addison Shepherd. Addison." She stood up and grabbed her handbag, "Actually, I think I'm going to pass on the tea, but thank you for the offer. And the use of your office."

"You can stay if you want to," Cooper offered, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing toward the couch. "Like I said before, I don't have any patients for an hour, and I can leave you alone if you don't want company. I have a house call to make anyhow."

Addison shook her head and walked over to the door. She was pretty hot, apart from the black stuff on her face, but even Cooper knew that this wasn't the time or the place for that. "No, I think I'm done here, but really, thanks again. You're the first friendly face I've had all day, and I appreciate the offer."

Her smile was a little less shaky this time, and Cooper stepped away from the door to get out of her way as she left.

*****

It was going on four when Addison got back to her hotel room, feeling absolutely exhausted from the morning's events. She'd known her visit to Santa Monica wouldn't be a pleasant one, but she hadn't anticipated quite how emotionally intense it would be. At least it was over with now--she'd done her duty and informed Sam of his impending fatherhood, and now it was up to him to decide how involved he wanted to be in their child's life.

She was just about to order some room service--she'd barely eaten all day, or all week, even, a combination of nerves and morning sickness--when her cell phone rang. She picked it up, expecting it to be Sam on the other end, hoping it would be Derek, but instead saw Naomi's name flashing up on the caller ID.

She opened her phone, putting it to her ear and immediately beginning to ramble. "Naomi, I am so incredibly sorry," she blurted out, the words falling over themselves in her haste to get them out. "I know you hate me right now, I get that, but I honestly never wanted this to happen. I was lonely and Sam was there and it just happened, Nai, it just happened."

"Addison, shut up." Her friend's voice was thick with emotion and it was fairly easy to tell that Naomi was crying. "I didn't call to listen to your pathetic apologies. I don't know why I called, but it wasn't for that."

"Okay," Addison agreed, hopeful that Naomi would want to talk, that they could communicate somehow, even if it was a little bit. Just talking was good, and even though she was about to burst into tears all over again, she felt a tiny ray of hope for the first time all day. "How about you talk and I listen? Or you can yell and I'll listen. Whatever you want, Naomi, we can do whatever you want to."

"I told Derek," Naomi said, sounding like she was choking back a sob. "I left a message on his voice mail and told him the good news. I thought he'd want to know that his wife is having my husband's baby."

It took a moment for her friend's words to sink in, and a gradual feeling of horror began to creep up on her. Derek would check his voicemail and then he would know. He would never forgive her for this; even if he could somehow get over the infidelity, he wouldn't be able to accept her having another man's child.

"Naomi, why--how--how could you do this to me?"

"How could I do this to you?" Naomi repeated, a bit of hysterical laughter in her voice as she repeated Addison's words. "How could I do this to you, Addison? Maybe you should have asked yourself that when you fucked Sam, shouldn't you? Maybe you could have considered that before you showed up here and wrecked it a second time. We were trying to work things out, Addison, and you have to come and stir up trouble all over again. Wasn't it enough for you the first time? Or do you get a kick out of this sort of thing?"

"You told Derek!" Addison repeated, feeling the tears begin to slide down her cheeks for what felt like the thousandth time today. She was going to be completely dehydrated if she kept this up for much longer. "You didn't have to do that! I'm trying to get him to talk to me so we can work things out, and you just ruined it!"

"Yeah, well, now you know how I feel," Naomi said bitterly, the tears evident in her voice as well. "Welcome to the club, Addison. Don't you feel so much better now?"

She hung up then, which was just as well seeing as Addison was on the verge of throwing the phone across the room, or saying something she was really and truly regret. As it was, she was too devastated to do much of anything besides cry. Which was so sad and pathetic and hopelessly emo of her, but she didn't know what to do now that her marriage was officially over, she'd lost her best friend, and she was pregnant with said best friend's husband's baby.

She sank down onto the bed, buried her face in her hands, and cried.


	2. Chapter 2

"You have to be involved, Sam." He looked up at his wife, wondering if he'd actually heard her words right. He must have misheard, he decided. There was no way that Naomi would be telling him to be involved in the life of his child with another woman.

"Excuse me?" He avoided looking at Naomi's face, not wanting to see the judgment he might find there. He thought this was what she wanted, after she'd been so upset to find out that Addison was pregnant. Didn't she want this to all just go away, with as little fuss as possible?

"Samuel Bennett, you're not seriously telling me that you're going to walk away from that child, are you?" The judgment was obvious in Naomi's voice, and it didn't take a genius to tell that she thought he was a miserable, cowardly piece of work. Which maybe he was, but he was doing this for her, so why was she so upset?

"I'm not walking away," Sam protested, frustrated that she didn't understand. "I'm going to pay child support, whatever Addison and I work out, and I'll visit too. It's not like I'm going to leave either one of them high and dry."

"So you're going to pay off Addison and hope the whole mess goes away?" Naomi shook her head as she took another sip of her coffee. She'd called him this morning, suggesting that they go out to Starbucks on their lunch break and talk. It had been the first time in a week that she'd spoken to him outside of work, and Sam was hopeful that they might be able to work something out. "That's really nice, Sam."

"I'm not paying her off!" Sam protested, feeling like he was fighting a losing battle. "I don't know what you want me to do, unless you want us to move to New York with Maya, or else I can commute from Manhattan every day. It's not exactly easy to see your child every day when you live on opposite coasts."

"So Addison's going back to New York, then?" Naomi bit her bottom lip, looking thoughtful as she drummed her fingers on the table like she did when she was especially thoughtful about something. "That's up to her, I guess, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be an active presence in this baby's life."

"How do I become an active presence in the life of a child who lives three thousand miles away?" Sam persisted, not seeing her point, or why she was suddenly so interested in his impending fatherhood. He'd assumed that she was upset over Addison's pregnancy because it would take away his attention from her and Maya, but apparently not, since she seemed to want him to become Father of the Year to a child who wasn't hers.

"I don't know, Sam, how do other fathers do it? You're not exactly the first man to be in this situation, I'm sure." Naomi sighed deeply, draining the last of her coffee before setting the cup down on the table. "Maybe you should take some time to figure this out before we talk again."

"Wait a moment," Sam protested, covering her hand with his as she stood up to leave. If she walked out like this, they would be in the same place they'd been before this meeting, possibly less, and it hurt to think that. They needed to work things out, for their own sake as well as Maya's, and after the hellish week they'd been through, he needed some kind of hope. "I'll talk to Addison, okay? I can't promise anything, but I'll talk to her."

"That's all I'm asking for, Sam." Naomi let her hand linger beneath his for a brief moment, then pulled it away.

*******

"I think Naomi wants me to talk Addison into staying," Sam confessed to Pete, glancing around briefly to make sure no one has stepped on his dog before turning back to him. He'd dropped by Sam's place that morning in the hopes of getting him out of the house and consequently out of the funk he'd seemed to be in for the past week.

Pete couldn't really blame him for that--he would have been shell-shocked in the worst way if one of his exes showed up at the clinic to tell him that she was pregnant--but it was times like these when a guy needed his buddies the most. "Naomi wants Addison to stick around? After everything that's happened? That seems…are you sure?"

"She kept going on about how I needed to be a presence in the baby's life." Sam shrugged and held up his hands as they continued on down the beach, the dog trotting alongside them. It was a sad excuse for a dog, Pete thought privately, more like a large rodent than an actual dog, but it was his friend's dog, Sam needed him to be a pal, so Pete would suppress his smartass comments. "I don't know why she was so adamant on the topic, but she seemed to be making her point clear."

"I've never done the whole kid thing, so I'm probably not one to talk, but you're not the type to just run out on a kid like that," Pete offered, shoving his hands in his pockets as they trudged through the sand.

Sam nodded. "I told Naomi that I'd pay child support and go to New York to visit."

"Is that what Addison wants?" Pete inquired, feeling a little silly at how he was asking all these questions and shit about the situation. He was great at talking about sports, and other guy stuff, but he'd never been all that great at discussing feelings, and feelings of women in particular. Violet would laugh her ass off if she could see him right now.

Sam shrugged again, looking a little sheepish this time. "I haven't exactly talked to her about it, but I will. I get the sense that she just came to tell me, you know?"

"So it's over between the two of you, then?" Pete picked up a stick and chucked it into the water, watching how the ripples from the splash become instantly obliviated by the waves.

"There never was an 'it' between us," Sam insisted, shaking his head vehemently. "We're friends, yeah, or at least we were before this all happened. Addison and her husband and Naomi and I were all friends in med school. Addison and I met up in New York over the summer while I was there to promote my book, she was lonely and we were both a little drunk, and, well, here we are."

********

Addison didn't know why she was still there.

She'd been in Santa Monica for a week now, much longer than she'd anticipated. She'd planned on two or three days at the most, just long enough to tell Sam about the baby and work out some kind of arrangement regarding finances and custody. It had seemed pretty cut and dry when she'd left--she assumed that she would do the single parent thing, and Sam would have full visitation rights to see their child whenever he wanted. She wanted her child to have two parents, but know that it would be difficult with the Naomi factor, since her friend was bound to be hurt and upset about the pregnancy. The whole situation was one gigantic mess, but she didn't have anyone to blame but herself.

Naomi hadn't returned any of her phone calls, which Addison found unsurprising. She hadn't expected instant forgiveness, and knew intellectually that she very well might have done something unforgivable, but she wanted to try her hardest to sort things out, since the friendship was important to her and she didn't want to just give up without trying. She knew she would survive if the friendship was over, but she wanted to give it her all so that later on down the road, she would know she'd done everything possible to mend things.

That was the trouble, though, she didn't know how. The situation was what it was and she couldn't take back sleeping with Sam, as much as she would have liked to. She couldn't change the fact that she'd gotten pregnant, and she was going to keep this baby--that much she knew already. Which left her with precious few options except to keep trying and hope that she would hit on something eventually.

She hadn't heard anything from Derek either, which was again, unsurprising. She hadn't called him as much as she had Naomi, just because she honestly didn't know what to say. He'd been furious after walking in on her and Sam, throwing her wardrobe out into the rainy street and eventually throwing her out as well. She'd never known Derek to act like that and while that previously unknown side of him had scared her, another part of her knew that it was her own damn fault and she shouldn't sit around feeling sorry for herself.

She'd tried to keep herself busy, taking the opportunity to go to the beach and do some shopping, which never failed to cheer her up. Well, almost never failed, but it helped some, and the sunshine was nice too. She'd spent two months in Seattle before coming here, taking a job at a hospital there under Richard Webber, an old friend who had been her and Derek's resident during their internship. The change of scene had been good for her, since she couldn't have born staying in Manhattan, but it rained all the time in Seattle which wasn't so cheerful, to say the least.

Her phone rang then, and looking at her caller ID, she saw Sam's name and picked up. She hadn't heard much from him either, but understood that she'd dropped a bombshell on him and that he likely needed time to process things. "Hi, Sam?"

"Addison." Her name sounded hesitant, unsure, and she wondered if everything was all right with him. It wasn't like Sam to get ruffled by much, but he was human just like everyone and her revelation had been unexpected and most likely unsettling. "Can we talk?"

"Um, sure," she agreed, sitting down on the bed as she immediately began twirling her hair in an old, nervous habit of hers. "What did you want to talk about?" Like that wasn't completely obvious, she reprimanded herself. Not so bright, Addison.

"Why don't you come over to my place and we can talk?" Sam suggested, still sounding unsure of himself, like he was reading from a script or something. The seconds passed while she contemplated this, before she realized that he was still waiting for an answer.

"Um, sure," she repeated, wishing she had a better command of words right now. "You live down by the beach, right?"

"Uh-huh," Sam confirmed. "Do you need directions on how to get there? "

"No need, I have GPS," she assured him, grabbing for the complimentary pen and paper that all hotels had. "Can I get your address?" He listed it, and she scribbled it down, checking on the spelling of the street so she wouldn't end up lost. "I"ll be there in a little bit, okay?"

"Naomi's going to be there too," Sam added, and Addison felt her heart begin to beat harder. She couldn't think of any reason why Naomi would be there, considering that she hadn't returned one of Addison's calls, but this was a good thing, right? She didn't know what it meant, but her friend couldn't be too angry if she was willing to be in the same room as her and Sam, let alone participate in the discussion.

"Okay," Addison agreed, resisting the temptation to ask why Naomi had decided to change her mind . If Naomi was at Sam's place, then that seemed to suggest that she and Sam were working things out in their marriage after all, which made Addison feel better. She'd been guilt-ridden at what she'd done to her friend's family, and if things turned out all right between Sam and Naomi, then her friendship might be salvageable as well. "I'll just take a shower and meet you there, okay?"

Sam agreed, and Addison hung up the phone and began rummaging through her suitcase for something to wear.

********

Addison didn't know what to do. She seriously, really, truly, didn't know. She'd fucked up big time, she knew, and every action had consequences and all that stuff. She knew all of these things and she accepted them. She'd fucked up when she'd slept with Sam. The consequences were the loss of her marriage to Derek, who she was still hopelessly in love with, and her friendship to Naomi, which hurt just as much albeit in a different way.

It wasn't that straightforward, though, and sometimes the consequences had consequences of their own. There was a baby involved now, which made everything fifty times more complicated and there would have to be something in place in seven months time, because she was not going to bring a child into the world when things were this fucked up in her personal life. Preferably, things would be in place with a minimum amount of stress, since getting herself this worked up was bad for the baby, and she was determined not to inflict any hurt on her child if she could possibly avoid it.

Which was nice in theory, but considerably more difficult to practice, judging from how she'd been calling Derek's voice mail for the last half an hour just to hear the sound of his voice. That was really and truly pathetic, even for her, but she missed him terribly and for all she knew, that would be the only way she could ever talk to him again.

She normally hung up before the beep, since there wasn't much point in leaving a message when she didn't know what to say. This time she wasn't quick enough, though, and suddenly the beep had come and gone and she was still on the line, trying to come up with something to say. If she was smart, she'd simply hang up and leave Derek to draw his own conclusions from that. Which was pathetic, true, although no less pathetic than her other options and now several seconds had passed with her just standing here, trying to come up with something to stay to her husband's (likely soon to be ex-husband's) voicemail.

"Um, hi, Derek, it's me. Addison," she clarified, although she wondered why she'd felt the need to leave her name when he knew very well who she was. Even if he'd deleted her from his contacts list (and he very well might have) he couldn't have forgotten her voice in the past two months. At least, she hoped he hadn't. Derek had been very forgetful regarding her birthday and their anniversary in recent years, but she didn't think he'd forgotten her entirely.

"Uh, yeah, I just thought I'd try you again, since I haven't heard from you, and I was really hoping we could talk. We need to talk, Derek, you have to let me explain things and show you how sorry I am." She felt herself becoming more and more upset and fought it back, trying to sound calm and rational. Repeating things she'd said two months ago when he'd thrown her out wasn't going to make things any better. It hadn't worked then and it wasn't going to work now. "I know that this means nothing to you after what I did, and I don't know if you're even listening to this or if you just hung up when you heard my voice, which I can completely understand. I just…I don't know what to say anymore, Derek. I made a terrible, terrible mistake and you can't even begin to know how much I wish I could take it back.

I love you, Derek, that's always been the case and I know that doesn't make any sense, since why did I sleep with Sam if I love you? I just…I was lonely, and drunk, we both were and I know that's not an excuse, I know that doesn't make anything right and now I'm rambling again. I hope you've hung up before this, since this is, well, embarrassing doesn't begin to describe it."

She sighed into the phone. "I guess I'll try you again, okay? Please call me."

She hung up the phone and sighed, feeling the warning signs of a migraine coming on. She'd had them regularly in college, then they'd stopped in med school and disappeared altogether up until two months ago, when she'd slept with Sam and her life fell apart.

Okay, that was enough of the emo, Addison decided, drawing a deep breath and exhaling slowly through her nose. Moping around over bad choices she'd made wasn't going to help anything--it wasn't going to fix her marriage or her friendship with Naomi, and it certainly wasn't going to make a good life for her child. She had to talk to Sam and they had to figure out how to be the best parents they could be. It wasn't just about her anymore, and from here on out, her child had to come first.

********

"So you're staying in LA." Naomi's voice was firm and Addison gaped at her friend in surprise. It was surprising enough that Naomi had summoned her to breakfast. They were sitting in Naomi's kitchen just like in old days, and if Addison wanted to, she could pretend that nothing had happened and things were just like they used to be. She didn't, though, since there wasn't any point in pretending. She would be much better off focusing on the future and how to clean up the mess she was in.

"I don't know yet," Addison replied, taking a sip of her orange juice. She was dying for some coffee, but caffeine was bad for the baby and Naomi didn't have any decaf on hand. "I was planning on going back to Seattle, but my plans aren't set in stone yet."

What she really longed to do was go back to New York. She'd been homesick ever since she'd left, but the way things were with Derek right now, it would be too painful to see him at work every day--that was, if he didn't quit rather than work alongside her, which was a distinct possibility.

"Why Seattle?" Naomi questioned, her head tilted to one side as she took a sip of her coffee. "I didn't know you knew anyone there. I thought you'd come straight here from New York."

"I took a temporary position in Seattle," Addison answered, knowing that this wasn't the time or the place to get into the sad story of Derek throwing her out. Naomi would have little sympathy, and even though they were sitting here talking like civilized adults, Addison wasn't about to push her luck. "My old mentor asked me to oversee a few cases and I thought a change of scene might be nice."

"Sure," Naomi agreed briskly, and Addison could tell that her friend didn't really care. It hurt, but there wasn't much she could do about it. "You're still going to stay in LA, though."

It wasn't a question, and Addison wondered what Naomi was getting at. She would have thought that Naomi would want her on the first flight out--she certainly seemed that way when Addison had shown up.

"I hadn't made any plans yet," Addison repeated slowly, treading carefully in the conversation. It sounded like Naomi wanted her to stay, except that made no sense whatsoever and she didn't know quite what to do. "Like I said, I was thinking I'd go back to Seattle."

"But Sam is here," Naomi continued, and for one crazy moment, Addison wondered if Naomi was trying to set her up with Sam. Which was crazy, given that Naomi and Sam were still trying to work out their marriage, from what she understood. That had made her feel a little better, knowing that she hadn't wrecked their marriage as well as her own, but it didn't help her with figuring out just what was going on here. "If you're going to raise your child together, it works better if you live in the same place."

"If we're going to raise our child together?" Addison shook her head, certain she wasn't hearing right. She'd come to LA because she felt that Sam had a right to know about the baby, but she'd been planning on doing the single parent thing. It seemed easier, given the circumstances, and she couldn't even imagine how complicated it would be to move to California to raise a child with the man she'd cheated on her husband with, who was trying to work out things with his wife, who had been devastated by his infidelity. The whole thing was one big, complicated mess and Addison was decidedly uneasy about bringing her child into a situation like that.

"Do you really think Sam's not going to want to be involved in his child's life?" Naomi wanted to know, and Addison dropped her gaze to the countertop, not wanting to say that yes, she thought just that. Sam was a good man, and a good father, from what she'd always seen of how he'd interacted with Maya, but he had a tendency to avoid messy situations and Addison had assumed that he would want to limit his involvement to paying child support and the occasional visit. "Because he wants to, Addison, and I think you should give him that chance."

"Wow," Addison said before she could help herself. That wasn't what she'd been expecting at all, and she wondered whether Sam had wanted to be involved from the start of whether Naomi had talked him into it. She suspected the latter, but that wasn't something she felt she could say, not right now, at least. "I didn't know that."

"He's a good father, Addison, and he and I both want Maya to know her brother or sister," Naomi continued, wincing slightly as if dreading the prospect of telling her daughter that her Aunt Addison's baby was actually her younger half-sibling. "There aren't any job openings at the clinic, unfortunately, but St. Ambrose is an excellent hospital and Sam knows the chief of staff there. I'd be willing to bet that Charlotte King would jump at the chance to hire a double board certified neonatal surgeon."

"Naomi, I don't know," Addison protested, feeling decidedly hesitant to uproot her life a second time and move to yet another new city where she would be seeing the man she'd cheated on her husband with, every day. She didn't have a problem with Sam being involved with their child, but the whole situation was so complicated and it seemed so much simpler to simply go back to Seattle, finish out her contract, and decide where she wanted to go from there.

"There's also the matter of our friendship," Naomi continued, a knowing look in her eyes as her gaze met Addison's. "It would be much easier for us to work things out with you here as opposed to in New York or Seattle or God knows where."

Addison resisted the urge to blurt out that Naomi had to be kidding, that their friendship was good and thoroughly wrecked. In all likelihood it was--what she'd done was pretty unforgivable and she didn't know if she would have been able to forgive Naomi if their situations had been reversed, if Naomi had slept with Derek. No, that was about as much of a violation of friendship as you could get, and irreversible, as much as Addison wished otherwise.

Yet here Naomi was, suggesting that it was possible, and the offer was incredibly tempting. Addison hadn't had many girl friends in her lifetime--she'd never gotten along well with women for the most part, although there were a handful of good friends like Savvy in New York, whose husband Weiss had been friends with Derek. And then there was Naomi, whom Addison had known since college and shared so many memories with that it hurt to think of just giving up on all of that.

"Nai, I have to think about it," Addison told her friend, although she knew it was merely a formality and that she was going to be staying. Now that her marriage to Derek was over, Naomi and Sam were the only family she had left. As much as she liked to pretend otherwise, she wasn't sure she was strong enough to stand losing them as well.

********

"I need a job."

The blonde woman looked up from her paperwork, the expression on her face a mixture of 'what the fuck?' and 'get out of my office.' "Excuse me?"

"I'm a double board certified neonatal surgeon," Addison continued, striding into the room and taking a seat in the chair in front of the woman's desk. The name on the door had identified her to be Dr. Charlotte King, Chief of Staff at St. Ambrose hospital, and the woman Addison needed to impress. "One of the best in the world."

"Oh you are, are you?" Charlotte King's voice had a faint southern drawl to it, and she arched an eyebrow as her blue eyes watched Addison intently. "Well, then, why don't you give me your name and I can tell you if I've heard of you."

Addison wasn't quite sure what her last name was at this point, but this wasn't the time to hesitate. She had a number of insecurities in any number of areas, but her expertise as a doctor wasn't one of them. "It's Montgomery-Shepherd. Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd."

"Well, now, that's very impressive, Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd." Charlotte nodded slowly, not breaking eye contact as she and Addison continued to size each other up. "Most people only have one last name, after all, and you have four."

"I also did a fellowship in cystic fibrosis, and I was the top neonatal surgeon on the East Coast," Addison countered, not wanting to give an inch. She was a damn good surgeon and she wasn't going to settle for anything less than what she wanted. "I can bring in millions of dollars to your hospital."

"I'm not unaware of your reputation, Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd," Charlotte shifted slightly in her chair and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her desk. "I heard about the TTTS case you helmed up in Seattle last month. Does Richard Webber know you're here?"

"Would it matter if he didn't?" Addison inquired coolly, taking off her jacket and folding it neatly on the chair beside her. Her number one rule in job interviews was to be confident and make the other person want to hire you. If things didn't work out, there were any number of other hospitals in LA that would jump at the chance to hire here, but St. Ambrose was closest to the clinic and Addison's first choice. She wasn't going to settle for anything less than what she wanted.

"Not really, no," Charlotte agreed, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly. "I don't have much of a problem with poaching staff from other hospitals. Especially not if they're good."

"I'm the best," Addison assured her confidently, trying not to think about what Richard was going to say when she told him she was leaving for Los Angeles. He'd been pushing hard for her to stay, but even aside from her new obligations in California, she just couldn't see herself in Seattle anymore. The last thing she wanted to do was explain to her old friend and mentor why she was having a baby who wasn't her husband's.

"Well, then, Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd," Charlotte King drawled, standing up and extending her hand to Addison. Addison shook her hand firmly, feeling relieved to know that one more thing was taken care of and that she didn't have to worry about employment any longer. "You're hired."

********

Of all the houses to rent in Santa Monica, Addison had had to rent the one next to his.

Not that this was a bad thing, necessarily, since Addison was a good, considerate neighbor who didn't throw her garbage on his front porch or throw wild parties till all hours of the night. Sam had trouble seeing Addison doing either of those things, really. She simply wasn't that kind of girl.

It was awkward, though, and Sam didn't know what to do about that. They were friendly and said hi to each other when they saw each other outside, and Addison occasionally came over to visit when Naomi was over, but there was an uneasy feeling between both of them when they were alone. That was seldom the case, though; as if by a mutual understanding, they rarely spent time together without Naomi as a buffer.

It wasn't because either of them was afraid of something else happening between them. That night in New York had been a one-off, something that had happened because they were both tipsy bordering on drunk and Addison had just seemed so damn sad that Sam wanted to do something to make her feel better. Which had been the completely wrong thing to do, and now he was left sorting out a huge mess of his own making.

To be honest, he hadn't wanted to deal with it when Addison showed up--he was trying to work things out with Naomi, and an unexpected pregnancy had been the last thing he'd needed. Which was selfish and cowardly, but Sam had never been all that good with facing problems head-on--avoiding them and hoping that they would go away was much more his style.

"Hey there." Sam turned to his right to see Addison waving to him from the neighboring balcony, smiling nervously and looking about as awkward as he felt. "It's a nice night, isn't it?"

"Very nice," Sam agreed politely, nodding out toward the water where the moonlight played on the ocean. "Nice and clear, even though you can't see the stars."

"Yeah, I know," Addison agreed with a wry smile. "You can't see them in Manhattan either. One of the drawbacks of living in the city, you know?"

"True, stars would be nice, but I'd rather have the city and everything that comes with it than be stuck out in the middle of nowhere, you know?" The conversation was nice and pleasant, and boring him to tears. He and Addison had never been as close as Addison and Naomi had been--they liked and respected each other a lot, but Sam had been closer to Derek--but they'd also never had to chat politely as if they were strangers. It just seemed weird and unnatural, but Sam didn't know what to do about it.

"This is weird, isn't it?" Addison asked, sighing deeply. "Like talking to my banker or something. Lots of small talk, no substance." She hesitated, suddenly looking horrified. "That was rude of me, wasn't it? I'm sorry!"

"It wasn't rude," Sam assured her, sighing in return. Addison had just said what he was thinking, and while he was hesitant to pursue the topic, it was likely to be better than standing up on their respective balconies making small talk. "You didn't say anything I wasn't thinking myself."

"I don't blame you for feeling uneasy around me, after I threw myself at you in New York," Addison admitted, the expression on her face a mixture of sadness and worry. "I hope you know that I never wanted to cause problems between you and Naomi, and I didn't mean to stir things up again by coming here. I just thought you'd want to know, you know?"

"I do," Sam agreed, nodding. It had been quite a shock, to say the least, and he still didn't know what to make of the news, but there was a part of him that was excited about being a father again, even if it was in a completely different way than he expected. "I mean, I did. I do. What I'm trying to say is, I'm glad you told me."

*********

"I don't know how it happened," Addison confessed, looking down at her hands as she talked to the shrink. She wasn't sure if she was talking about her affair or her pregnancy or how she happened to be here in the first place, sitting in the office of Oceanside Wellness Center's therapist who happened to be a good friend of Naomi's. Addison had never been the therapy type, one to sit back and pay a stranger to listen to her problems, but she'd come by that afternoon to see Naomi, who had been out on a house call. She'd gotten so upset at the news that Violet, who'd been the one to break it to her, had hustled her into her office and asked if she wanted to talk. Addison didn't, and yet here she was half an hour later, still pouring out her story.

"I just missed Derek so much and Sam was there and it just happened."

She knew this was stupid, telling her sad tale to Naomi's friend, who most likely felt little, if any sympathy for her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come."

She stood up to leave but Violet stood up as well, putting a hand on her arm. "Addison, wait, you don't have to leave. I'm not going to judge you."

Addison looked at her skeptically, wondering if the other woman was playing her for a fool. Of course Violet was judging her. She was Naomi's friend, and Addison had slept with Naomi's husband. If that wasn't a case for judgment, what was?

"Yes, Naomi and I are friends, but that doesn't mean that you and I can't talk, does it? This isn't junior high, where I'm not going to speak to you if my friend isn't, and it seems like you could use someone to talk to. Besides, Naomi's talking to you, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is," Addison admitted, slowly sitting down even thought she still felt ready to bolt out of there. "It's just weird, you know? I know I'm the wicked witch here, and I screwed up majorly. I don't blame you all for siding with Naomi."

Violet sighed, looking annoyed and Addison regretted her words. She was sounding whiny and emo, in spite of her resolution to be more proactive. "Addison, if you feel uncomfortable talking to me, I'll understand. All you have to do is say so."

"No, it's okay," Addison assured her, setting back against the sofa and trying to release some of the tension in her shoulders. "It all just happened so fast, you know? Derek--my husband--wanted kids for years and I wasn't ready, so we kept holding off. I wanted to establish my career and get myself into a place where I felt like I could be a good parent."

"That's understandable," Violet assured her, smiling sympathetically that she had to have perfected in shrink school, Addison thought to herself. Well, no, that wasn't fair, really. What did she expect Violet to say, that it was all okay? Of course not, and now she was rambling again.

"I just don't know what to do," Addison finished, slumping wearily in her seat. "I mean, I'm having the baby--that's not the question here. I just thought it would be different, you know, with Derek, and without my best friend hating me."

"I don't think Naomi hates you," Violet offered tentatively, looking like she was slightly at a loss for words. "Yes, she's hurt and angry, but you said that she's talking to you and that she was the one who asked you to stay. That doesn't exactly sound like hating to me."

"I know," Addison agreed wearily. "I'm just a wreck, and I don't know if it's the hormones or just that I'm still mourning the end of my marriage. It's been two and a half months since I saw Derek, and I haven't talked to him since the night he walked in on me and Sam. He was so angry--I didn't think he could be that angry. He has a temper, yes, but he threw me out of the house, Violet. It was raining and he was angry and I didn't know what to say to him or how to fix things. I still don't know."

Violet nodded and gestured for her to continue. Addison was grateful for the other woman's silence--it helped to get things off of her chest, and she'd felt weird about discussing these things with Sam or Naomi. She still felt a little strange talking about her affair with Naomi's friend, but Violet was a therapist and Addison assumed that there would be some level of confidentiality, even if this was just an informal chat and not an official session.

"On the upside, I have a job now," Addison offered, grateful to have some kind of positive news to share, even if it was just with Naomi's therapist friend. "Charlotte King hired me to work at St. Ambrose, and I start on Monday. She's promised me lots of surgeries, so it'll be good to get back in my element again."

"You're a surgeon?" Violet inquired, and Addison felt a measure of satisfaction at how the other woman appeared impressed. It was arrogant and elitist, she knew, the way surgeons tended to look down on other doctors, and it was something she was going to have to change if she was going to spend time with the Oceanside group. Addison resisted the urge to say that she was one of the best, or to list off her credentials, knowing that it would only come across as arrogant. Even thought she wouldn't be working here, it was likely that they would interact frequently, since the practice referred their surgical cases to St. Ambrose, and it was easier to get along with people when you didn't look down your nose at them.

"Neonatal, primarily," Addison answered Violet's question, feeling a little better now that they were talking about something she was good at instead of how messed up her life was. "And I have a house now, although I have a lot of work to do to get it ready for a baby and I still can't believe it, you know? I'm having a baby."

She sighed again, feeling weary at how everything always seemed to come back to the same, simple fact. She wished she could feel more excited at the prospect--she had always loved being Aunt Addison to Maya and to Derek's nieces and nephews--and she hoped that she would be once the shock had worn off, but right now she felt more scared than anything else.


	3. Chapter 3

Derek had been in California for a grand total of four hours and he already hated it.

It wasn't any one thing that he objected to, but a number of little ones--the sun was too bright, everything was spread apart, there were too many damn palm trees, and it just wasn't Manhattan. He was a New Yorker, biologically programmed to hate everywhere else, and he didn't have the slightest idea what he was doing out here on the opposite end of the country, in search of a woman he didn't even like who had screwed his friend and was now gestating the spawn of that illicit affair.

It had taken him a good two and a half hours to get to Santa Monica, and another twenty minutes to find parking at St. Ambrose. It hadn't been terribly difficult to track down Addison--he could have called Naomi, he supposed, but a Google search had informed him that Addison Montgomery-Shepherd had signed on to become the new Head of Neonatal at St. Ambrose hospital. Derek wondered what Richard had thought of that--he had to be pretty annoyed at losing his new surgeon so quickly, although it wasn't surprising, given Addison's habit of trading one thing for another whenever she got bored.

"Excuse me, can I help you?" Derek turned around at the woman's voice, feeling a sense of annoyance at being interrupted from his purpose of finding Addison. He should have brought his white coat--it would have been much easier to roam the hospital undetected--and now he was going to have to waste time talking to some intern about who he was and what he was doing, and he was going to have to check in at the nurses station to have Addison paged if he wanted to talk to her. Just fantastic.

He glanced back quickly, taking care not to make eye contact, and saw a slim, blonde woman out of the corner of his eye. Some annoying intern, no doubt, and he wondered if he could get away with ignoring her and pretending that he hadn't heard. There were other people in the hall, and it was probable that she was talking to someone else. He had things to do and people to talk to, and Sam to punch. He was busy, and he didn't have time to talk to blonde interns.

"Excuse me, you, with the blue jacket and the weasel face." The blonde was at his elbow now and Derek forced back his irritation and gave her his most charming smile, hoping that he could flirt a little and get her to leave him the hell alone. 'Weasel face' was going to make it a bit more difficult, but Derek Shepherd had never had much of a problem turning on the charm for the ladies.

"Can I help you?"

"That's so nice of you to ask," the blonde replied, a hint of a southern accent in her voice. She wasn't bad-looking, really--Derek's taste didn't run much towards blondes, but she was cute and looked feisty, which was always a plus. "I was wondering if you could tell me who you are and what the hell you're doing running around my hospital?"

Oh, she was definitely feisty. "I'm sorry," he apologized, trying to look contrite and sincere even though he privately thought that this intern had one hell of an attitude problem. He'd been cocky himself when he was just out of med school, but Richard Webber would have torn his head off if Derek had gone around the halls claiming that New York-Presbyterian was *his* hospital. "I was just looking for my wife."

"You should check in at the nurses station if you don't have her room number," she informed him, pointing down the hallway. "It's standard protocol for all visitors. You can't go roaming around the halls by yourself--only doctors are allowed back here."

"I am a doctor," Derek clarified, still smarting a bit over 'weasel face'. Seriously, what was wrong with interns in California? He squinted at her name tag, then reddened to see that her coat read 'Dr. Charlotte King, Chief of Staff'. Well, this was just wonderful. "I'm just looking for my wife, Dr. King, and I understand that she works here?"

"You might want to get more specific than that, sir, since I have multiple married women on my staff," the blonde continued, smirking slightly at him. "Although I think I can say that only one has a husband who'd feel free to wander where he chooses without checking in first."

Derek sighed, realizing that he wasn't going to win this debate. He'd been made to look the fool, which wasn't exactly thrilling, but he'd come here to find Addison and he had to play nice with this Charlotte King if he wanted to make that happen. Being escorted out of St. Ambrose wouldn't be a very auspicious start to his time in LA.

"I'm Derek Shepherd, and my wife is Addison. She's a neonatal surgeon."

"Oh yes, Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd," the blonde answered, and Derek felt a little better hearing that Addison hadn't shed his last name in favor of going by 'Montgomery'. "I suppose we can allow you to see your wife, Mr. Shepherd."

Derek bristled at being called 'Mr. Shepherd' and suppressed the urge to mumble that that was very gracious of her. He hadn't been called 'Mr.' since he was in med school, and always insisted on having 'Dr' put on his plane tickets and the like. He'd worked hard and long for his MD, and hadn't Addison told this woman anything about him? He was Derek Shepherd, dammit! He sensed that this Charlotte King wouldn't be impressed by those arguments, though, so he merely nodded and followed her down the hall. Yes, he definitely hated California so far, and he had no idea why he'd come.

********

Addison's first thought upon seeing him was that she was hallucinating. She'd been working throughout the night trying to save a young pregnant woman who had been in a three-car collision, she hadn't been sleeping well in general, and she was about to drop. Add in that being five months pregnant made her tired all the time and she wasn't in such good shape. It wasn't entirely improbable that she would start hallucinating about her ex-husband being in her office.

She blinked and the image was still there. Derek was scruffier than she remembered, and his hair had gotten longer. He held a manila envelope in his hand and Addison was willing to bet that it contained the divorce papers she'd signed and filed the previous week. There was still the possibility that she was hallucinating--most likely, Derek would have signed the papers immediately, overnighted them to her, and gotten on with his life without her.

"Addison." The image spoke, and the last doubts vanished from her mind. Derek was here, and she didn't know what he wanted.

"Derek." She wished she had something better to say--she'd imagined a meeting just like this for months, ever since she'd left New York, but now that the moment was at hand, she was feeling strangely tongue-tied. Perhaps she'd used up her words on all those messages she'd left on his voice mail. "What are you doing here?"

"You sent me divorce papers." His voice was flat and unemotional, and he wouldn't look her in the eye. His gaze was fixated on the bump in her abdomen, and while she couldn't tell what he was thinking, she was guessing paternal pride wasn't among the list of options. "You're pregnant with Sam's baby and you sent me divorce papers."

Addison sighed, not knowing how to respond to that. She'd spent the last three months waiting for papers to come from Derek until, unable to bear being in limbo any longer, she'd seen a lawyer and had her own set drawn up. She hadn't expected to hear anything from her husband, but either way, the waiting would be over. "What do you want, Derek?"

"I wanted to see it for myself," her husband replied, sounding like a stranger instead of her Derek. "Naomi told me, but I didn't quite believe it until now. You and Sam didn't take too long, did you?"

"Take too long to do what?" Addison retorted, feeling too tired to argue much, in spite of the fact that Derek was clearly trying to pick a fight with her. "To have a baby? This wasn't exactly something we planned, Derek."

"What? You mean you and I didn't plan for you to screw my friend and have his baby?" Derek rolled his eyes. He was taking that arrogant tone that never failed to annoy her, especially when he was acting pissy like this. "Because I always thought that was the master plan. You'd put me off and put me off whenever I wanted to start a family, and then you'd jump in the sack with Sam Bennett and pop out his kid nine months later."

"You know what I mean!" Addison could hear her voice rising, but she wasn't at the point of caring right now. "I told you, Derek, it just happened! Is there a reason why you came all the way to Los Angeles just to start an argument? Because we could have done this on the phone, months ago. It's not like I didn't give you ample opportunity."

"Did you ever want to have kids with me, Addison?" Derek demanded, sounding hurt underneath all the anger in his voice. Again, she wished that she'd done everything differently and that the baby she was carrying was Derek's. If she'd just had a family with him when he'd wanted to, everything would have been so much different. "Because the way I'm looking at it right now, I don't think you did."

"Derek, I don't know what to tell you." She heard a tremor in her voice and hoped that it wouldn't break completely. She already knew that she was going to be crying when this conversation was over, but she was hoping that she could put off the actual crying part until after he'd gone. "I've already said that I'm sorry, and I'd change things if I could, but as they stand right now, I don't know what to do."

"There's nothing to do." Derek shook his head, and Addison could see a hint of tears in his eyes as well. "There's nothing that can be done, Addison. Our marriage is over."

*******

The punch came so fast that Sam didn't even see it coming. One moment he was in the reception area of the practice, chatting with a patient, and the next he was flat on the ground with his ears ringing and a drop of blood dripping down his cheek. His head hurt like a bitch, his knee didn't feel so hot either, and Derek Shepherd was standing above him, scowling.

"Derek?" Sam started to sit up, winced, and put a hand to his head. He'd expected this months ago, after he'd come back from New York or when Addison had come to tell him that she was pregnant, but not now. It seemed a little late for Derek to show up suddenly that angry. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Maybe I should have asked you that five months ago when you came to New York to screw my wife." Derek lunged at him again and Sam found himself back flat on the floor. He put his hands up to defend himself and got in a few swings, but then he was pulled in one direction, Derek another, and Dell was standing between them.

"Hey, whoa, what's this all about?" Cooper wanted to know, straining as he held Derek by the arms. "Sam, who is this guy?"

"I'm Addison's husband and he fucked my wife!" Derek snapped, giving Sam a look of pure loathing. Cooper's gaze shifted to Sam who nodded yes, it was true. He remembered now that Derek was the kind of guy who took a while to get angry. It had been a while and he was definitely angry now.

"Look, Derek, I know you're pissed off." Sam held up his hands, speaking calmly and slowly. He'd never had an angry husband after him before--he'd never thought he would have an angry husband after him, to be honest--but not making any sudden moves seemed to be a good strategy. "I'm not saying that you don't have a right to be--"

"Oh, you're giving me permission to be angry? How generous of you." Derek rolled his eyes before turning to Cooper, trying to pull away from the other man's grasp. "You can let go of me now. I'm not going to hit him again. I'm a surgeon, and I'm not going to risk my career on the likes of him."

Cooper looked doubtfully at Sam. "I don't know, Sam, what do you think?"

"Let him go," Sam answered, feeling strangely relieved that Derek was here and that the scene he'd been dreading was actually taking place. Of course, it would have been preferable if Derek had simply stayed in New York, but he probably would have done the same thing if he'd been in Derek's position, and the other man had a right to be angry.

Cooper reluctantly let go and Derek stepped forward, his body posture challenging Sam's and his stance clearly saying that in spite of his promise not to get violent, he would really, really love to hit him again. "So, Dr. Feelgood, would you care to explain yourself? You really do live up to your nickname, don't you?"

"Hey, man, why don't we go back to my office and talk about this?" Sam offered, keeping a wary eye on Derek in case the other man made any sudden moves. He would have believed Derek's reason about protecting his hands if the other man hadn't hit him before, multiple times. "I get that you want to talk, but this isn't really the place for it, you know? Don't you think we'd be better off with a little privacy?"

"Oh, I get it, Sam." Derek rolled his eyes. "You don't want me making a scene in your lobby because it'll embarrass you and everyone will know what a traitorous bastard of a friend you really are. You don't want me to tell everyone that Mr. Family Man here cheated on his wife when he fucked mine, do you?"

"Derek, come on, let's just go on back and we can talk as long as you want," Sam urged, not wanting to admit that Derek was exactly right. He and Naomi had prided themselves on the fact that the practice was like a family, and he'd always thought of himself as a family man, which was part of why his infidelity and Addison's pregnancy had scared him so much. The last thing he wanted was to have the whole messy business become public knowledge for his staff and their patients.

"Yeah, sure, let's go talk," Derek agreed sarcastically, pacing back and forth across the lobby floor while pausing occasionally to shoot dirty looks in Sam's direction. "Because there isn't anything I'd love to do more than have tea and crumpets with my favorite person in the world. God, Sam, please tell me you aren't so stupid as to think I"d actually want to do that."

"We're not going to get anywhere by shouting at each other like this," Sam tried to reason, suspecting that this was a lost cause and that his best bet would be to simply hope that this finished up as soon as possible and that Naomi wouldn't be finished with her patients and come out here to witness this little scene. That was the last thing he needed. "Let's just calm down and talk things over and sort out our differences."

Derek laughed, a hard, bitter laugh that made Sam wince. He was aware of how stupid his words sounded--there wasn't going to be any sorting out of their differences, not after what he'd done. Their friendship was over because Sam had done something unforgivable. It made him a little sad, sure, but he'd brought it on himself and it wasn't like he hadn't known it already.

"What are you, delusional? Do you honestly think there's any way I'm going to want to talk to you again after this?"

Sam shook his head slowly, knowing that the other man was right. What was done was done and hopefully, this little scene would be as well. Naomi was going to hear about it--there was no way around that--but if he told her himself, that would soften the blow a little, he hoped. He'd hurt her enough already and he wanted to spare her any further pain as much as he possibly could.

"Thank God." Derek threw his hands up in the air, looking positively exasperated. "You finally get that I hate you and I never want to see you again. It's about fucking time."

"Hey, you were the one who came here," Sam snapped, suddenly angry although he couldn't pinpoint the exact reason why. "You approached me, remember? You come barge into my place of business and assault me, all to let me know that you never want to see me again? That's really rich, Derek. I get that you're pissed off and that I screwed up big time, but you're not entirely blameless in this either."

"You screwed up?" Derek repeated incredulously, and Cooper stepped toward him again, looking uncertain as to whether Derek was going to get violent again or not. "That's what you call this, you screwed up? You fucking my wife is the same thing as going too fast in a speed zone or bringing home the wrong kind of pasta? That's screwing up, buddy. Fucking your friend's wife is just being a traitorous bastard, and it's just incredible that you're blaming the whole thing on me."

"What do you want from me, Derek?" Sam demanded, feeling beyond frustrated at this. His professional reputation was going to be in tatters after this, both Naomi and Addison would be upset when they heard about it, and this was just more than he needed right now. "Tell me, what can I do to make this better?"

"Maybe I should fuck Naomi and see how you like it," Derek smirked, giving him a nasty look. "That should even the score nicely, don't you think?"

This time, it was Sam who lunged at Derek, and hit him as hard as he could.

********

"There, there." Charlotte awkwardly patted Addison's head, wondering how the hell she'd gotten into this situation. She'd come by to check on how the other doctor's surgery had gone and found Addison in her office in tears. Before she could ask about the patient, Addison had blurted out that her estranged husband had come to give her divorce papers and thrown herself at Charlotte, who was most definitely not the huggy type. "It's going to be all right. There there."

"It's not going to be all right," Addison sobbed, sniffling as she pulled back briefly to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand. "You didn't see the way he looked at me when he saw me. He's wanted kids so long and for him to see me like this, having Sam's baby…he just looked so hurt."

"Sam's baby?" Charlotte repeated, wondering in spite of herself if Addison meant Sam Bennett. Not that it made any difference, as long as she did her job well. Which she did--Addison Montgomery-Shepherd was a damn good surgeon, even if she was also an emotional mess right now.

"He was in New York to promote his book," Addison continued, thankfully releasing Charlotte as she reached over to her desk for a tissue. "Derek and I were having issues, and the three of us were supposed to meet up for drinks, but Derek was a no-show. Sam and I had a few too many, one thing led to another, and then Derek walked in on us."

"Um." She was no good at this comforting shit, Charlotte thought, thankful that Addison had released her. Her family had never been big on showing emotion and she was Addison's boss, not her girlfriend. This wasn't her area of expertise.

"He was so angry when he saw us, Sam and me, and after Sam left Derek threw my stuff out and then threw me out." Addison blew her nose but immediately broke into a fresh set of sobs. "I came to Seattle to take a temporary position my old mentor asked me to, and then when I found out I was pregnant, I came here."

"Er." Charlotte cast her mind furtively to think of something to say, anything, because she had nothing right now. She felt for Addison, she really did, but she was pretty certain that comforting crying surgeons wasn't in her job description and the whole thing sounded rather like a soap opera to her. Not that she watched soap operas--well, actually, The Young and The Restless was one of her guilty pleasures, but she would die rather than admit that.

"Now everything is such a mess," Addison finished, sniffling loudly as she tossed the Kleenex into the trash basket and helping herself to another one. "Naomi was so angry when she found out about the pregnancy, and she called Derek to tell him. I thought he might come out then, but he didn't, and now he shows up three months later with divorce papers in hand."

"That's odd," Charlotte remarked, a little curious in spite of her adamant resolve not to get involved. She had enough in her own life to manage without getting sucked into Addison's. Still, if the husband wanted to serve divorce papers, why had he waited three months to do it?

"I sent them first," Addison clarified, and Charlotte wondered if her thoughts had been that obvious to the other woman. "The divorce papers, that is. I thought he would send them, I waited for them, and then I just couldn't stand the waiting any longer. I thought he would just sign them and send them back. I never thought he would come out and deliver them in person."

"So you sent him divorce papers and you're upset because he gave them back to you?" This wasn't making any sense and to make things worse, Addison started crying again. Charlotte hadn't known that anyone could cry that much, and Addison Montgomery-Shepherd wasn't exactly the weepy type, from what she'd seen.

"I'm sorry," Addison apologized, wiping her eyes and giving Charlotte a shaky smile. "You must think I'm a complete basket case. I'm not normally this emotional, but Derek and I…we have a lot of baggage."

********

Derek's day was most decidedly not going well.

He'd started at the ass crack of dawn with getting on a flight to LA, confronted Addison and seen for himself that she apparently had no issue with having kids, she just didn't want to have his kids. Then he'd gone by the Oceanside Wellness Center and risked his surgical career by punching Sam Bennett in the face, which had been both stupid and incredibly satisfying at the same time. None of that had been a garden of roses, nor had the two hours of rush hour traffic back to LAX in the stupid little car he'd rented. None of this was going to end up in his Christmas letter this year.

All of it paled in comparison, though, to the fact that at the last minute he hadn't been able to get on that plane back to New York. Even after all she'd done to him, fucking his friend and having an adulterous love child, he hadn't been able to detach enough to leave Addison to her new life and move on with his. He hated that he still cared. He didn't want to still care. But he did, and that both pissed him off and scared him shitless.

He'd wanted a family with Addison ever since they'd gotten married. Derek had grown up with four sisters and while it most decidedly hadn't been easy being the only boy, especially after his father had died, he'd still loved being part of a large family, and wanted to recreate that someday when he found the right woman. When he met Addison in med school, he thought he'd found her--she was everything he'd wanted and then some. They'd talked about children before they got married and while Addison had been adamant that if he wanted more than two, he was going to have to bear them himself, they had agreed on that they both wanted a family. Someday, when they were settled in their careers and the time was right.

Multiple times over the last eleven years Derek had brought up the subject of kids, and every time Addison had had a different excuse for waiting. They were still residents and they would have more time to dedicate to a child once residency was over. She wanted to do a fellowship in cystic fibrosis, but after that, for certain. Once they finished paying off their student loans, they would be in better financial shape to provide for a child, and babies were expensive. She would love to have kids, she really would, but they were just so busy right now and it wouldn't be fair.

Apparently she didn't had any of those excuses anymore, Derek thought sourly as he drove along the street, peering into the darkness at the house numbers. After he'd left the airport he'd rented another car, driven back to St. Ambrose, and flirted with the girl in human resources in order to get Addison's address. Now he was driving around her neighborhood in what he could only attribute to insanity. Perhaps he'd truly lost his mind when he'd walked in on Addison and Sam in the throes, and he was only just now finding that out.

He got lost twice along the way, but after what felt like an hour but was more likely twenty minutes or so, he located Addison's house and pulled into her driveway, shutting the engine off. He didn't feel up to knocking on her door right then so he sat in the darkness for a few minutes, trying to will himself to go back to the airport but knowing that he wouldn't be able to. He should be on his way to New York now, and the fact that he was sitting in the darkness outside his wife's house was just beyond pathetic.

She didn't even want to be his wife anymore, he thought bitterly, his thoughts going to the divorce papers that were still in their envelope, sitting on the seat beside him. If he'd been smart, he would have left them in Addison's office that afternoon, but as things were he'd been too damn upset to think about that, and instead had taken them out with him in his desperation to get out of her office before she could see how badly hurt he was.

And now he couldn't even think straight, so getting out of the car might be preferable. As much as he hated the thought of another conversation with Addison , sitting here in the dark and sniffling was just plain pathetic. Grabbing the manila envelope, he let himself out of the car, walked up to Addison's door, and knocked.

There wasn't any response at first and Derek's thoughts went immediately to what she could be doing. Decorating the nursery with Sam, perhaps, or simply fucking until the bed broke. Weren't pregnant women supposed to want sex all the time? And Sam was probably more than happy to oblige, now that Derek was officially out of the way and on his way to being an ex.

He knocked again, growing more and more impatient with her and furious with himself. He had to be the world's biggest idiot for letting her get to him like this. He should have written her off months ago as one hell of a mistake, but instead he was here, on the other side of the continent, knocking on Addison's door like a pathetic loser while she fucked the man she'd cheated on him with. This was just beyond sad, and his one consolation was that his best friend wasn't here to see this. Mark never would have let him hear the end of it.

He was about to knock a third time when the door swung open to reveal a red-eyed, puffy-faced Addison who promptly froze when she saw him. Well, wasn't this a warm welcome.

Derek tried to speak but froze himself, swallowing as he looked at her. She was definitely with child--she'd been wearing scrubs earlier that afternoon, which had made it a little less obvious, but now she was in sweatpants and--Derek had to look twice just to make sure he was seeing correctly--one of his old flannel shirts that he hadn't even noticed was missing from his wardrobe. She looked just like he'd always imagined she would look like pregnant. He just never thought it would be someone else she had children with.

"Addison." He found his voice first, slowly stepping forward as she continued to stare at him. She'd been crying--that much was easy to tell, but it wasn't much consolation to know that she felt as wretched as he did. "Can I come in?"

She nodded and stepped back, holding the door open for him as he stepped inside. He had a look around the living room as he took off his coat, noting how Addison had managed to create a home that looked warm and lived-in. She had always been good at that--she'd insisted on doing the decorating herself for their New York brownstone--and the thought that she had done it again, with Sam, was almost too much to bear.

"Um, where's your…can I put this in your coat closet?" he blurted out, holding up his jacket. Addison nodded again and gestured toward a door in the hall, her eyes following him as he found a hanger and hung up the coat before turning back to her. "You're probably wondering why I'm here."

She nodded a third time. "You can come on in if you want to. The living room's a lot more comfortable than just standing around here. Would you like something to drink?"

Derek shook his head and handed her the manila envelope, watching her lips tremble as the tears welled in her eyes again. She was blinking quickly, like she did when she was upset and didn't want to show it. Addison hated to cry, especially in front of the person who was upsetting her.

"I'll send these to my lawyer in the morning," she told him quietly, tucking the envelope under her left arm without making any effort to open it. "Thanks for coming to deliver them."

"Open them," Derek forced himself to say, even though the temptation to nod and let himself out was overwhelming by that point. It wouldn't do any good to flee, though, since he would simply waste another few hours and however many hundred dollars on another plane ticket he wasn't going to use. He watched Addison's expression closely as she opened the envelope, pulled out the papers, and began to flip through them.

"You didn't sign them." Her eyes met his and he could read the confusion there, her eye color frequently changing like it did when she was most conflicted. "You didn't sign them. What does that mean, Derek?"

"I don't know." Derek shook his head and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, wishing he had a better sense of what to say and having the distinct sense that he was going to be making an idiot out of himself. "I don't know what it means, Addison. I just…I couldn't sign them."

"You couldn't sign them and now you're here," Addison repeated slowly, still holding onto the divorce papers clutched in her right hand. "I just…I don't know what to think, Derek. I tried calling you for months, you never called back or picked up at all…I don't know what to do here, I honestly don't."

"Just so you know, I don't know why I'm here either," he confessed, dropping his gaze down to his feet before snapping it back to her. He wished she didn't look so sad, and that part of him didn't still want to comfort her. As much as he hated it, he still cared about her and he didn't know what to do about that.


	4. Chapter 4

When she first woke up, Addison didn't notice anything amiss. She was in her bed, with her pale blue comforter on top of her, and her husband asleep beside her. She closed her eyes again, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep. Something was different, though, and she spent another couple of minutes trying to figure out what it was. This was her bed, and her sheets, and her husband…

Addison opened her eyes to see Derek lying asleep beside her, stretched out on his back and snoring slightly. This wasn't right--Derek was supposed to be in New York, signing the divorce papers she'd sent him. Then she remembered everything that had happened yesterday, and was more confused than ever. She remembered Derek asking to stay the night, and her giving him a pillow and blanket for the couch. There hadn't been any drinking, which had been the culprit the last time she'd had inappropriate sex, and--she checked quickly to make sure that her pajamas were still on--no sex either. She couldn't help being relieved about that--not that she didn't like sex, and she had been craving it lately, but it would make things much more complicated than they already were, if that was even possible.

"Derek," she whispered hoarsely, poking him softly in the shoulder. In happier days, she would have woken him up in much naughtier ways, but that was then and this was now and everything was a lot different than it used to be. "Derek, wake up."

Derek groaned, rolling over onto his side in an attempt to get away from her. "Five more minutes, Addie," he mumbled, grabbing the sheet and pulling it over him. "Just five more minutes."

Addison didn't know if she should poke him again or let him wake up on his own. Either way he was going to freak out when he realized where he was, although maybe not if he'd done it on purpose. She doubted it, though--Derek had a tendency to sleepwalk when he was under great amounts of stress, and yesterday had been stressful to say the least. Which meant that he was going to realize that he was in her bed and things would be strained and weird between them, even more so than they already were. A great start to a new day.

"Derek." She tried again, shaking his shoulder this time, and he rolled over, opened his eyes, stared at her, and sat up abruptly, just like she'd anticipated him doing. It had been expected, which made it hurt a little less, but it still stung nonetheless.

"Addison." He leapt out of bed, looked down to check that he wasn't naked, and looked back at her, the panic evident in his eyes. "What happened? Why was I in your bed?"

"I'm guessing you were sleepwalking again," Addison shrugged, trying her hardest to appear nonchalant. Getting upset or worked up wasn't going to do either of them any good. "The last I saw you last night, you were settling down on the couch."

"Your couch is too narrow," Derek scowled, and for a moment it felt like old times again. The moment passed quickly, though, and then it was back to the painful awkwardness that had prevailed ever since Derek had shown up at her office yesterday afternoon.

"I'm sorry?" Addison immediately regretted her words--she hadn't meant her reply to sound so pissy, and the last thing she wanted was to start her day with another fight with Derek. She still didn't know exactly why he was here, but she was hoping that they could talk and she could learn more that way. "Are you hungry? Would you like some breakfast?"

Derek nodded slowly, not making eye contact with her. An awkward silence settled over them and Addison wondered if things would get better eventually or if they would always be like this. Not like she had much choice in the matter, really--Derek would talk, she would listen to what he had to say, and then they would decide, separately or together, where to go from there.

********

She didn't know what to do, she really didn't. Derek was there and they needed to talk, but Charlotte King had called fifteen minutes ago wanting them to get their asses into the hospital and consult on a pregnant woman who had sustained a spinal injury when she'd gotten into a car crash. Yes, your husband too, or wasn't he still in town? No arguments, Montgomery. I patted your hair while you cried all over me. You owe me.

Not like there was any choice, really, which was why Addison was in her car right now, driving toward St. Ambrose. Derek was sitting in the front seat beside her, holding onto his thermos of coffee and staring blankly out the window, likely in an effort to avoid conversation. They needed to talk, yes, but Addison wasn't any more anxious to start a serious discussion than he was. Not now, when they had patients who needed them. Not before she was ready to hear what he might have to say.

It felt strange having him here, like she was about to wake up any second and this would all have been a dream. When she'd woken up this morning, it had seemed just for a moment like the past five months hadn't happened, that she hadn't slept with Sam and wasn't pregnant with his baby, and she and Derek were back in New York where they were supposed to be. That was the thing, though, things weren't like that anymore, and they weren't ever going to be again. Even though nothing else had happened between her and Sam, that wouldn't change the fact that she was going to be having his baby, and that the child would be a tie between the two of them.

Derek was never going to be her baby's father, at least, not the biological father, and she didn't know how he felt about raising a child who wasn't his, even if he could manage to forgive her for the affair. Everything was a series of question marks, and Addison had never liked uncertainty. But Derek had come back for a reason, and she would wait and hear him out, and decide to go from there. Whatever the decision ended up being had to be the one that was best for her baby--it was hard to realize, but it wasn't about her anymore.

"You like your job here?" Derek asked the question while still staring out the window, and Addison wondered if the lack of eye contact was a bad sign or if it didn't mean anything and she was just being paranoid. "I don't know how hospitals here compare to New York, but then again, Los Angeles isn't exactly small potatoes, so maybe you get your share of interesting cases. I don't know."

"I like it," Addison agreed, tapping on the brake as the tail lights went on on the car in front of her as the traffic slowed to a halt. "Dammit," she muttered under her breath, hoping that there wouldn't be a traffic jam. It was an odd time for traffic--ten in the morning on a Saturday, but then again, traffic in LA was often unpredictable. Well, wasn't this lovely. They hadn't had this problem in New York, since their brownstone was a few blocks from the hospital, easily walkable. But everything in California was spread out, which meant that everyone drove, which meant that the roads were often congested. Like now, when they had a patient waiting for them in God knew what kind of shape. Yes, this was just plain fabulous.

"That's the extent of your opinion of your job? 'I like it'?" Derek shook his head, looking slightly bewildered. "I assumed that it would have to be something fabulous for you to stay out here, unless you had some other reason." His face darkened, and although he didn't say anything more, Addison could tell that he was thinking about Sam.

"It's a good hospital," Addison clarified, hoping to avoid the topic of Sam. It was bound to come up, and they needed to talk about it, but this was hardly the time or the place for that. She didn't know what they would find when they got to St. Ambrose, but she wanted to be on top of her game, not barely holding herself together because she'd had a fight with her husband. Not to mention that she was mortified about yesterday and how she'd cried all over her chief of staff. She didn't want a repeat of that incident, and she doubted that Charlotte King did either.

"It's one of the top-ranked hospitals in the Los Angeles area, and they've been putting up a lot of money to improve their neonatal services," she continued, wanting to do justice to her place of employment. "To keep me happy, I think." She grinned at Derek, hoping to coax a smile out of him in return. He merely stared at her, which was disappointing, although she consoled herself with the fact that at least he was looking at her. That was an improvement, however small it might be.

Things never used to be like this, Addison thought sadly. When she and Derek first started dating, they could talk for hours at a time without a pause in conversation or any awkward silences. They had always prided themselves on their communication skills, but somewhere along the line they had broken down. Not somewhere down the line, Addison corrected herself sadly, they had broken down after the third or fourth time Derek had brought up the subject of children and she had said that she wasn't ready yet. That was most likely the reason he had turned to his work, burying himself in it to the extent that she barely saw him. Derek had gotten busy, she had gotten lonely, and they both knew how that story ended.

Maybe not ended, she clarified, although she didn't know if this was The End or not. Yesterday she would have said it was, that Derek would have sent back the signed divorce papers and that that would have been the end of their marriage. But he had shown up, papers unsigned, and she didn't know what he meant by that. Maybe he didn't know either, she mused to herself. Or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to keep her in limbo for as long as possible. That didn't sound like Derek, but a lot had changed and the man sitting beside her wasn't the same one she had married. To be fair, she wasn't the same person either--the Addison of eleven years ago never would have cheated on her husband, let alone in such a cruel way.

Now he could barely look at her, let alone touch her, although come to think about it, that wasn't so different from before her affair, when things had started to get rocky between them. She hadn't realized then how hurt he must have been that she hadn't wanted to have children, and it must be doubly hard for him to see her like this. The trouble was, she didn't know what to do to make it up to him, or even if it was possible. There had been so much hurt between them, and some scars just didn't go away no matter how much you wanted them to.

"Just so you know," Addison began slowly, not sure if she should say this or not. It wasn't going to go over too well with Derek, she knew, but he was going to find out eventually and as much as he wasn't going to like it, she thought it would go over a little better if he heard it from her. "Just so you know, Sam lives next door to me."

"He what?" Derek's hand tightened on his thermos, and she could see his knuckles had turned white. His voice was calm, though, like she'd said she'd picked up some new shirts for him while she was out shopping. "So Sam Bennett is your next-door neighbor. That must be awfully convenient, isn't it?"

"It's not like that," Addison protested, drumming her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, wishing that the traffic would start moving and that she'd waited to bring up the subject. It had been complete insanity to bring it up like that, and she wondered why she hadn't thought of that thirty seconds ago. "There's nothing between Sam and me, Derek. There was never anything between us--I told you, that was just one time."

"Okay," Derek agreed mildly, and she wished he would yell, or say something, anything to show that he was angry, that he still felt *something*. The rockier things got between them, she'd noticed in New York, the calmer he became. She wanted him to show some emotion, even if it hurt to hear. This silence, the calm acceptance hurt a lot more than angry words ever could have.

But he'd come here, she reminded herself. Derek had come after her, and that had to mean something. He wouldn't have come if he hadn't cared. She must still mean something to him, even if he was trying not to show it.

She wanted to ask him if he still loved her, and if he thought he could get over what she'd done and give their life together another try. She wanted to ask if she'd ruined everything with her actions, and while she knew she very well might have, she was hoping that perhaps something was fixable. There were so many unasked questions she wanted to ask him, but she didn't know if she was strong enough to hear the answers and if she didn't ask, he wouldn't have the chance to say that he was sorry, he wished things were different, but that their marriage was over.

*******

To be honest, Derek had expected Addison to fight for him. He'd been angry that night he'd thrown her out--so, so angry, but he hadn't anticipated that she would pack her bags and leave for the opposite side of the country. It was passive-aggressive of him, he'd realized in retrospect, to drag her out of their house, slam the door on her, and expect her to keep coming back for more of the same. He knew he'd fucked up, but he'd just lost all reason when he'd walked into his room to see Sam on top of Addison, both of them in the throes. Sam had gotten out of their too quickly, but Addison had pleaded with him, and he didn't know if he could ever forget the sound of her crying as she begged to be let back inside.

He'd been stunned to find out that she'd left New York--Savvy had been decidedly cool toward him when she'd informed him that Addison had taken a temporary post in Seattle. That by itself wasn't surprising--Richard had been after both of them for ages to come and work for him--but the fact that she'd left that suddenly, without so much as a goodbye or even coming by to get the rest of her things, stung. Not like he could blame her, after the way things had been left between them. It was just a huge mess and why did he sound like an emo teenage girl?

Derek sighed and took off his scrub cap, tucking it under his arm as he returned to the scrub room to clean up. It had been a long and bloody surgery, and while Addison had safely delivered the baby by caesarian section, the mother had sustained substantial spinal damage. Derek had done his best, but he didn't know if it had been enough or if she would never walk again.

He cleaned himself up and decided to go check on his patient, since that was preferable to looking for his wife. They had worked well together during the surgery, although that was nothing noteworthy--they had always been a good team in the OR, even if everything in their personal lives was falling to pieces. Even so, though, he wasn't anxious to resume their conversation from the car, even though he knew that they needed to talk, and that he was the one who had started the whole thing by showing up out of the blue from New York.

He'd been stunned to get divorce papers, and even more so that they were from California. He'd thought she would still be in Seattle, at least, he'd hoped that she wasn't in Los Angeles living happily ever after with Sam Bennett. Even though she liked Sam better than him, it seemed, considering that she was thrilled to have Sam's baby while she hadn't wanted any children of Derek's. Maybe she should have just married Sam in med school, Derek thought sourly. Saved them all a hell of a lot of trouble.

"That was nice work out there, Dr. Shepherd." Derek looked up to see Charlotte King standing beside him, her arms crossed against her chest as she nodded her head slowly. "In my experience, neurosurgeons are a horribly conceited lot, but you just might be as good as you think you are."

"I want a job." Derek was surprised at his words, although another part had known that this was coming ever since Addison had told him about living next door to Sam. No way was he going to back to New York and let Sam piss all over his territory and fuck his wife. "You've seen me in action, you know I'm good, and I want a job."

"Well, aren't you demanding?" Dr. King put her hands on her hips and stared at him intently. Derek tried to match her stare, but she was unyielding and he was the first to look away. "Tell me, Dr. Shepherd, is it a New York thing that makes you and your wife come waltzing into my hospital demanding jobs, or do Shepherds just have an over inflated sense of entitlement?"

"I don't know if it's an over inflated sense of entitlement to want a job," Derek pointed out, trying to remember that he should be as charming as he could. Of course, he suspected that a dreamy smile wasn't going to work so well on this woman, but he needed a job and if he wanted to stay in Los Angeles and work things out with Addison, it would be much simpler if they worked at the same hospital. "I'm a good neurosurgeon, and I can bring in a lot of income to your hospital, if I'm hired."

"Does your wife know you're asking for work?" Dr. King fixed him with another piercing gaze, and this time, Derek was able to match her. "I'm not a big fan of hospital drama, Dr. Shepherd. I don't want my doctors getting so wrapped up in their personal lives and who's sleeping with whom that they can't practice medicine properly.

********

Dammit, why did Addison have so many shoes? Derek scowled as he kicked a pair out of the way, and then, reconsidering, carefully placing them back in the closet. Addison would be home any minute and he didn't want to incur her wrath by having damaged her footwear. He examined the heels carefully to see if there were any scuff marks. He didn't see any, but if there were, Addison would notice straight away. She had a sixth sense when it came to her shoes.

Derek sighed, taking a brief moment to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his forehead. He'd woken up this morning tired and cranky, and absolutely fed up with sleeping on the couch. It was too short, for one, and narrow too, and there wasn't any point in sleeping there when Addison had a perfectly good bed with plenty of room for both of them. Granted, they hadn't discussed sleeping arrangements, but he didn't see a reason why she should mind.

It would have been easier if Addison had a guest room, but it had taken all of five minutes of snooping after Addison had gone to work to learn that said guest room was in the process of being converted to a nursery. Which was unsurprising, really, considering that Addison was having a baby and that babies need space and supplies. He'd shut the door quickly and gone back downstairs, trying to forget how much it stung to see the crib and changing table and stuffed animals in there.

"Derek?" He turned around to see Addison standing in the doorway of her bedroom, a slightly bewildered expression on her face. Not so bewildered, he saw on second glance. She looked absolutely horrified. "What are you doing?"

He stood up, stepping away from the closet as he gestured inside toward his clothes, which he'd carefully hung up in one corner. He didn't see how she could object, seeing as he had practically no clothes to speak of right now, but even after he'd had his clothing from New York shipped over, there would still be plenty of room for his possessions in here. "I just made some space for my things. I hope that's okay."

"You're making space for your things," she repeated, seeming to sink a little as she leaned back against the wall. She looked pale and scared, and he didn't know why. Granted, he'd gone moving around her things, but it wasn't like he was snooping for anything, and all he'd wanted to do was make a little corner for himself in her life. "I thought it was something else."

"What did you think it was for?" Derek blinked, feeling positively bewildered. He didn't remember Addison getting upset over things like this, although a lot had changed and maybe pregnancy hormones were making her oversensitive?

"I just thought…that night when you…" Addison trailed off, breaking eye contact with him and turning her gaze to the rug on the floor. "You took all my stuff from the closet and threw my clothes into the rain."

Oh. That wasn't one of his proudest moments by any account, and he still didn't like to think about how he'd grabbed Addison and physically dragged her out the door. She could have been seriously hurt, and what kind of man treated women like that, especially the woman he was supposed to love and cherish?

Derek sighed and slumped against the wall, not knowing what to say. Sorry would be a start, although it seemed so inadequate, and it wouldn't take away the look of fear in his wife's eyes. Maybe this was all a bad idea. He might have been better off staying in New York, signing the divorce papers, and letting them both start fresh instead of showing up unexpectedly in Addison's life and stirring up old hurts for both of them.

"I'm sorry, Addison," he apologized, wishing he had some better words for her. He'd been so, so angry and hurt at the time, but he was partially responsible for what had happened to their marriage, and if he'd just opened the door when Addison had been pounding on it, sobbing, things might have been different.

She didn't reply, but she nodded slowly, and Derek wasn't sure how to interpret that. Well, he would have plenty of time to figure it out, he hoped, if Addison let him stay. It hadn't occurred to him before now that she might not, and as much as her infidelity had devastated him, he genuinely wanted a shot at working things out, if it wasn't too late.

"Did you take any dresser space?" Addison asked, crossing the room and opening a drawer. She began to take out articles of clothing, setting them on the bed in neat little piles. "You can have this drawer, if you want it. I'll put these in the back of the closet--it's not like I can wear them for a while anyhow." Her voice was trembling and she was blinking quickly, the way she did when she was about to cry and didn't want to. She avoided eye contact with him as she moved back and forth between the bed and the closet, piling her clothes carefully on a shelf in the back.

Derek felt like he should comfort her, but he didn't know how. Hugs had always worked well in the past, but as ashamed as he was to admit it, he felt uneasy touching her like this, when she was pregnant with another man's child. In truth, he didn't know if it was the pregnancy or the infidelity or something else that was making him hesitate, but regardless of what it was, he was just standing here while his wife was trying very hard not to cry.

"Addie." The name just slipped out, and it felt funny in his mouth. He'd always called her Addie, ever since they'd started dating, but things were different now and they weren't Derek and Addison anymore. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to." He didn't know if he meant hanging his clothes in her closet or being in Los Angeles while he tried to figure out his marriage and his life, and judging from the expression on his wife's face, she didn't either.

When she looked at him, her eyes were filled with tears and he didn't know how he kept screwing this up and making things worse, but he seemed to have an uncanny ability for that lately. "What do you mean, Derek? Are we ever going to talk about why you're here?"

"I don't know." It was the honest response, but he didn't know how satisfying it was going to be to her. It sure as hell wasn't doing much for him.


	5. Chapter 5

When Addison first came home, she was too tired to notice that the living room looked different. She had seen six patients that day, the last of which ended up needing emergency surgery. She'd spent five hours in a St. Ambrose OR trying to save first the mother, then the baby, and it was past eight o'clock by the time she finally got home. All she wanted was a glass of wine, a hot bath, and a good night's sleep.

Of course, the wine was out since she was pregnant, and while she could still have the hot bath and early night, it wasn't going to be as relaxing as she'd thought, because Derek was still at her house, and things were still strained and awkward between them. He still hadn't said why he'd come, and the only clue she had as to his intentions were the unsigned divorce papers that had been lying on her office desk for the last two days.

They hadn't talked, and they needed to. Addison wasn't thrilled at the idea of starting the conversation, but someone had to, since leaving things unsaid tended to make them more complicated and that was how they had gotten into trouble in the first place. She still hadn't gotten used to his being here, even though it had been almost a week. She'd spent so long wishing he would show up and then when he had, she had no idea what to do. She couldn't even bring herself to talk to him about it, for fear that he might up and leave and what would she do then?

The same thing she'd done for the last five and a half months, she told herself firmly, refusing to let herself get bogged down in that vicious cycle again. Derek was here, she assumed that he wanted to work things out in their marriage or else he wouldn't have come, and she was going to let him explain things in time and not pressure him.

"Hello?" she called out, wondering if Derek was home yet. He'd been working at St. Ambrose for the last three days and while part of her expected him to still be there--her husband was a compulsive workaholic, as she knew all too well--Derek had seemed different since he'd arrived in California. She hadn't expected him to stay, to be honest, but then he'd moved his things into her bedroom while she was at work, and the following day he'd shown up in the kitchen that morning and announced that he'd accepted a job at St. Ambrose and would it be okay with her if they carpooled?

"Addison?" Derek came down the stairs, dressed in jeans and his old Columbia t-shirt that she'd been so fond of appropriating back when they were dating. "I hope you don't mind that I moved the furniture around."

"That's…" she trailed off, not sure of what to say. She didn't want him to think she was angry, because she wasn't. Just bewildered, about more than just the furniture in the living room. She didn't know what was going on, and she didn't like not knowing. Not being in control was something that had always been scary for her, and she felt completely out of her element here. "Why did you move the furniture around? I'm not mad, I'm just wondering."

"I thought that if we put the sofa against this wall, we could put my desk against that one," Derek answered, gesturing to one wall with a wave of his hand. "Either that, or else I could share your study, which might be easier, but I wanted to ask you first."

"Uh, sure, we can share," Addison told him, still stuck on the furniture in the living room. It looked good--there would be less glare on the TV the way Derek had arranged things, but it was going to take some getting used to. There were a lot of things in her life that needed getting used to, really, and not just the living room furniture. It had been a huge adjustment not having Derek in her life, and while she was still reeling from that, there had been the added complication of realizing that she was about to become a mother. Then, when she was starting to come to terms with that, Derek showed up and she was back at square one.

"Are you sure?" Derek asked, and she wondered if he sensed her hesitation. "Because I can make do with a corner of the living room, if that's better for you. I don't mind as long as I have somewhere to put my books once I have them shipped out from New York."

*******

"I don't know what to think, Naomi," Addison confessed to her friend, sighing wearily as she took a seat at the kitchen table and put her hands on her forehead, massaging her temples. "Derek's moving my furniture around and now he wants to send for his books and keep them in my study. I think he's moving in--he definitely seems like it, but we haven't actually talked about anything."

"You think he's moving in but you haven't talked about it?" Naomi repeated slowly, wanting to make sure that she'd heard Addison right. She felt a little uneasy having this conversation--the pain of Addison and Sam's betrayals was still fresh--but she knew that she'd promised Addison that they would work on their friendship if the other woman stayed in Los Angeles. Besides, if she wanted to work things out with Sam, that meant having to accept his child with Addison, and in turn be on good terms with her.

"I know we should, but he doesn't seem too anxious to bring up the subject and to be honest, I'm not either. I guess I'm afraid that he'll change his mind and go back to New York, and I'll never see him again." Addison reached for another cookie off the plate and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. "Maybe we don't need to talk? It might be better to just start off fresh without any of the old baggage, you know?"

"Start off fresh?" Naomi asked incredulously, gesturing to the bump in Addison's middle. "Please tell me you were kidding about that. You're pregnant, Addison. That baby's always going to be a reminder of what happened between you and Sam, and this isn't going to go away, even thought you want it to."

"You're right," Addison sighed, setting down her cookie on the table and placing her hand on her stomach. "Starting fresh isn't exactly an option. I was just hoping that since we're in a new location and all, it might be easier than back in New York with all the memories."

Privately, Naomi thought that it would probably be a hell of a lot easier in New York, since Derek and Addison didn't live next door to Sam there. If she was honest with herself, she would be a lot more comfortable with Derek and Addison in New York, even though she believed Sam's word that his infidelity was a stupid mistake that would never happen again. Addison wasn't the only one who wanted to escape from the memories.

"I don't know how Derek feels about the baby," Addison continued, picking her cookie back up and taking another bite. "Well, I can guess how he feels about it. He doesn't say anything, but he never says anything about it, he doesn't want to touch me, he flinches when I touch him, and I don't think he looks below my shoulders when he looks at me. He just doesn't want to deal with it, but he's going to have to, if we're going to have any kind of future together."

"Have you told him that?" Naomi probed, getting the sense that she was getting into some pretty sensitive territory of Addison's. It was a sensitive area for all of them, really. Addison's pregnancy was the elephant in the room, but it wasn't going away and they would have to deal with it in a matter of months. Maya didn't know yet that her Aunt Addison's baby was going to be her half-sibling, and it wasn't a discussion that Naomi was looking forward to having with her daughter. It would have to come sooner rather than later, though, since Maya was a bright kid and she would figure it out for herself if Naomi waited too much longer to tell her. Maya knew that her dad had cheated, although she didn't know that Addison was the other woman. That would be even more hurtful, and Naomi wanted to spare her daughter as much further pain as she possibly could. She'd been through enough already.

********

Sam was happy for Addison, he really was. He'd felt bad about what he'd done and he knew she loved Derek and was broken up over the end of her marriage. As for himself, he wasn't in love with Addison--he cared about her a lot as a friend, but he was and always had been in love with Naomi. He was committed to working on his marriage and healing the wounds he'd caused for his wife and child.

Nonetheless, he felt conflicted about Derek's sudden reappearance. He hadn't spoken much with the other man past their fistfight at the practice the day Derek had come to California, and he knew that was something he needed to remedy. If Derek and Addison were getting back together, then that would mean that Derek would be a fixture in his child's life.

That was the thing, though, he wasn't sure he wanted Derek to take that role. This was his son, and he didn't want to be shoved out of the picture because Derek had decided he wanted to work things out with Addison. That was great if the two of them could salvage their marriage--Sam knew how much that meant to Addison--but that didn't mean he didn't want to be a presence in his child's life.

It was ironic, he knew, given his initial reaction of not wanting to get his hands dirty. It had been Naomi who had pushed him into the parenthood thing, but he'd had three months to get used to the idea of being a dad again, and he didn't want to give that up.

He rang Addison's doorbell and waited, hoping that Derek would answer. He knew Addison was out--he'd seen her drive off half an hour ago--and he really wanted to talk to Derek alone. He didn't anticipate it going smoothly, given that he wasn't exactly Derek's favorite person, but it was a discussion that needed to be had.

There wasn't any response, and Sam contemplated whether he should ring the doorbell again or not. Derek might not be there, or else he might be hiding rather than talk to him. The latter was silly, though, given Derek's reaction when he showed up in Los Angeles. He wasn't exactly the type to shy away from confrontations.

He raised his hand to knock and just then, the door swung open to reveal Derek standing there with a decidedly sour expression on his face. "What do you want, Sam?"

"I just want to talk," Sam said evenly, holding his hands out in front of him. "Five minutes of your time, that's all. Nothing painful, I promise."

He immediately regretted saying that, since he wasn't sure how well he could keep that promise. It was a stupid promise, really, considering that Addison's affair had to be enormously painful. Regardless, he was here and the important thing was that they talk.

Derek hesitated, and for a moment Sam wondered if the other man was going to slam the door in his face. Then Derek opened it, slowly, and stepped aside to let him in. "Five minutes."

"Five minutes," Sam agreed, stepping inside and kicking off his shoes. He followed Derek into the living room and took a seat on the sofa, trying to figure out how he was going to start. There wasn't any good way to ask how the other man felt about his wife having a baby that wasn't his, but Derek was looking at him expectantly and he had to say *something*.

"We need to talk about Addison," Sam began, deciding to get straight to the point. This wasn't a time to beat around the bush, and he had a feeling that Derek felt the same way. "Or rather, Addison and the baby, because we're going to need to sort some stuff out before the baby comes."

Derek stiffened, his eyes darting around the room as if he was looking for an escape. Sam could tell that the other man really didn't want to be having this conversation, and he felt bad for him. He could relate, since he didn't want to be having this talk either, but he'd promised Naomi he would talk to Derek and he didn't relish the thought of telling her he'd flaked out.

"Addison's having a baby." Derek looked at him briefly, then looked away, and Sam suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He knew Derek wasn't stupid, but the other man was stating the obvious here. "I mean, Addison's the one having the baby. I'm not."

"Well yeah, Addison's the one carrying the baby, but it's not going to magically disappear once it's born," Sam told him, telling himself to be patient and that this had to be difficult for Derek. He'd been guilty of wanting the same thing, so it really wouldn't be fair of him to judge the other man for it. "Believe me, babies are very good at making their presence known."

"I thought…" Derek trailed off, looking thoughtful and not a little bit anxious. He rubbed his chin and stared at a picture on the wall, still not making eye contact. "I assumed that Addison would take care of it, you know, since it isn't my kid."

"You thought Addison would take care of it," Sam repeated, trying not to get too angry. Derek's attitude upset him--hell, it just plain pissed him off. "So if the baby's crying and Addison isn't home, you're not going to pick it up or feed it or change any diapers? No, you're not the father, Derek, but if you don't make an effort, Addison's going to be upset by that, and you sure as hell can believe I will."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure as hell going to be upset if you don't get the fuck out of my house right now." Derek stood up, his hands clenched into fists and his eyes flashing like they had when he'd first showed up at Oceanside two weeks ago. "Who the hell are you to tell me that how I'm feeling about my wife's adulterous love child isn't good enough?"

Sam stood up as well, feeling decidedly pissed off at Derek's outburst. Granted, Sam has screwed up majorly and he had every right to be pissed off about Sam's sleeping with his wife, but he wasn't blameless either. Addison had been deeply unhappy in New York, and while that didn't justify her actions, or Sam's, it wasn't entirely their fault.

"It's not like you're the innocent party in this, Derek," Sam snapped, finally losing his temper even though he knew he'd promised Naomi he would be nice and civil. Well, he would have promised Naomi if he'd talked to her about talking to Derek--it had been more of a spur of the moment decision, which made it impossible to talk to Naomi, but he really should have and standing here musing over his decision-making skills while there was an angry Derek in the room was really a very stupid thing to do.

"You're blaming me?" Derek asked incredulously, his expression a mixture of disbelief and anger. "You come to New York, you seduce my wife, you get her pregnant, and this is all somehow my fault? You're unreal, Sam, completely crazy. You know what? Just fuck you."

"It wasn't like that," Sam shot back. He knew he should be careful here, that his words to Derek could very possibly hurt Addison, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. God knew she'd suffered enough without Sam making it worse, and the aftermath of his fight with Derek probably wasn't going to make things any better. He was really wishing he'd kept his mouth shut--getting involved like this was just plain stupid. "Addison was sad and lonely because you were never home anymore. You cared more about your work than you did about her, and that's on you, Derek, that was your fault."

"Yes, let's put everything on me," Derek agreed sarcastically. "Never mind that you and Addison were fucking like bunnies when I walked in on you. Hell, it probably would have been a full-blown affair if you'd stayed longer in New York. Did you even care about her, Sam, or was she just a conquest, a way to one-up me?"

Sam really wanted to hit him and wipe that ugly smile off of his face, but he held himself back, not wanting a repeat of Derek's appearance at the Oceanside Wellness Center. The last thing either Addison or Naomi needed was another ugly altercation between him and Derek. This wasn't what he'd come over here for--he'd wanted to make things easier for Addison and for their child, and fighting with Derek wasn't going to accomplish that.

"Look, I get that you're pissed off at me, and you're right, it was a really shitty thing I did to you," Sam conceded, hoping that his acquiescence would calm down the other man and enable them to have a civil conversation about Addison and the baby. "I don't want to fight with you, Derek. I just want us to talk and find a way that's going to make things easier for all of us."

"Yeah, well, maybe I should knock up Naomi?" Derek snapped, looking angrier than ever. "That should even the score nicely, and then I can get all self-righteous on your ass about how to raise your wife's adulterous love child. Yeah, I think that's the perfect solution, don't you?"

Sam took a swing at him, unable to control himself any longer. The blow grazed Derek's chin and the other man stumbled back, knocking over a chair in the process. He landed flat on his ass on the floor, the wind knocked out of him as he stared angrily up at Sam.

"Don't you ever say that again," Sam warned him, his voice low and soft. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this angry and it was taking all his self-control not to throttle Derek completely. "Don't you ever fucking say that again if you don't want me to kick your ass from here until next Sunday."

"Yeah? I'd like to see you try," Derek shot back, scrambling to his feet and tackling Sam, the two men falling back onto the couch together. He hauled off and hit Sam in the nose, hard, and Sam could feel the blood begin to trickle down his face. He shoved Derek away as hard as he could and lunged after him.

*******

It was funny really, Derek thought, how life worked out. His father had died when he was twelve, of cancer, and even though he was young at the time, he could remember how it had all played out. It started innocently enough, with some coughing and difficulty breathing, a bad cold or perhaps bronchitis. Then there was the first hospital visit and even though his mother didn't want to tell them how bad it was, Derek and his sisters could all see the writing on the wall. The worst part was the time after the initial round of chemo--his father had gone into remission for two years and they all let themselves believe that things might be okay after all, that he'd beaten the disease even though they also knew that cancer was something that could, and often did, come back with a vengeance.

Which it did, and nine months after his father relapsed, he was dead and buried, and Derek was left wondering how it all could have happened, why it happened at all, and what the hell was wrong with the world that a good, kind, honest person like his father could die in such an ugly, brutal way.

It didn't make sense and it wasn't fair, and that seemed to be how life played out, he'd noticed. He'd operated on more patients than he could count, and some of them lived, some died, and while some he didn't like at all, others he liked a lot and had families who knew how special they were. Others were special too and didn't have anyone, and those were the roughest cases of all. He'd learned that death didn't discriminate and how good a person was didn't necessarily have an effect on the end result--he'd known that for ages, since he was a child, really.

He'd toughened up since then, and he rarely let it get to him when he lost a patient, since that was the business of being a doctor and you couldn't let yourself get too emotionally attached if you knew what was good for you. That was a hard lesson for Addison to learn--she had such a big heart that she took each death as a crushing defeat and would beat herself up over whether she could have done something differently that might have led to a different outcome. Eventually Richard Webber had given her a hard lesson in distancing herself from her patients, and that had helped, but even after that Derek would occasionally find herself in tears when she'd lost a baby she'd fought especially hard to save.

At first he would comfort her when he found her crying, but as the years went on he found himself more annoyed with her than anything else. Life was hard and life was unfair, and if she didn't want to accept that then why the hell did she want to be a doctor in the first place? They would fight over this in the late years of their marriage--he thought she was being silly and overemotional, while she accused him of being cold and unfeeling. Deep down he knew she was probably right--she'd always had a better bedside manner than he did, and she'd certainly never been kicked in the shins by a little boy who was upset over the fact that Derek hadn't been able to save his father. Addison would have handled telling the family a lot better than he had, she wouldn't have been so cold and unemotional when she'd broken the news.

In truth, she was a better doctor than he was, period, and he'd resented her for that. Even more than that, though, he'd resented her for not wanting to have children, for her continuous excuses about how she wasn't ready. A few times he'd asked her flat-out if she would ever be ready, which had ended in screaming fights that hurt both of them--at least, he knew it hurt him and he assumed from her tears that it was hurting her as well. He hadn't admitted as such to her, though, and maybe it would have been better if they'd parted ways then, before they'd bruised and scarred each other to the point where they were both completely weighted down with their mutual baggage. At this point Derek didn't know if a fresh start was even possible.

Regardless, here they were and here he was, in a state he didn't know and with the wife he both hated and still loved, as much as he didn't want to. He didn't know why that was, well, the hating was easy but the loving was proving all kinds of problematic and he would be on the next flight to New York if he knew what was good for him. But Addison had always been his weakness and so he stayed, living with his wife who was pregnant with another man's child when she'd never wanted Derek's and hating himself for his weakness.

He knew he should straighten up the furniture from the afternoon's altercation with Sam, but he was still too angry to do anything besides pace around the living room, trying to sort out his own thoughts. Addison was going to be home before too long, and she would want to know what happened and he wanted to be at least somewhat calm before he told her, even though he was still furious at Sam's audacity. Who was he to tell Derek how he could be feeling, to criticize him for not reacting in the right way to the news that his wife was having an adulterous love child? Sam had fucked Addison in Derek's bed, on his favorite sheets, and knocked her up and suddenly Derek was the bad guy for not being over the moon about it?

Just then Derek heard the sound of the garage door opening and knew that Addison was home. He had approximately ninety seconds until she was in the house and he wished he'd straightened up a bit more but, well, it was too late for that now. It wasn't like she wouldn't know soon anyhow, since either Sam or Naomi was bound to tell her. He wouldn't put it past Sam at all to whine to Addison about how big, bad Derek had kicked his ass.

He hadn't emerged unscathed either, though, although thankfully he'd avoided injuring his hands. He'd gotten a punch in the jaw and a bloody nose, but that didn't matter so much when he thought about the fact that Sam looked a lot worse. Yeah, he wouldn't put it past the guy at all to go tattling to Naomi and Addison. He wouldn't be surprised at all.

"Derek? You home?" He heard Addison's keys jingling as she let herself into the kitchen, and he knew the ninety seconds were down to just a few. "Have you eaten yet, or else I thought we could order--" She came into the living room and stopped as she took note of the dishevelment around her "--pizza. Derek, what happened here?"

"Sam came over," Derek said bluntly, deciding to go with the truth. Addison was bound to be upset and he was screwed anyhow, so he might as well cut straight to the point and get it over with. "He had issues with my attitude toward the kid, and I had issues with his attitude toward his dictating how I'm supposed to feel about the whole thing. We got a little carried away, I think."

"You got a little carried away," Addison repeated, her gaze moving from the overturned chair to the couch cushions scattered on the floor to the broken vase near the hallway. "Is that what happened to your face too? Do you want to tell me what the hell's going on here?"

"Like I said, Sam had issues with my attitude," Derek shrugged, holding his hands out in front of him as he waited for her to get upset. It was going to happen any moment now, and while he wasn't looking forward to it, it seemed unavoidable. "He had issues with my attitude, and I had issues with him, namely his fucking my wife and being pissy over my being unhappy about it."

Addison sighed, dropping her purse on the coffee table and taking a seat on the couch. She looked tired and Derek felt guilty at having upset her, even though he wasn't sorry he'd kicked Sam's ass. No, he definitely didn't regret that at all.

"How do you feel about the baby, Derek?" Addison asked quietly, placing a hand on her stomach as she looked up at him. She didn't seem angry, rather disappointed in him, and Derek wished he didn't feel bad about that. He kept reminding himself that she'd fucked Sam in his bed, but that didn't seem to be enough to make him stop caring about her. "Honestly, I don't know what your feelings are on the matter, because you've never said."

"I'm…um…" The first thing that came to mind was that he wished it was his, but that was a little more personal than he wanted to share with her. He was here in California, trying to work things out with Addison, but he wasn't about to let down his guard with her and give her the opportunity to hurt him again. "I don't know, Addison, I honestly don't."

"You're going to have to figure that out, Derek, and soon, because this baby is going to come whether you're ready or not." She looked at him, her eyes sad and her face solemn. "I love you, Derek, I really do, but this isn't going to work if you can't accept the fact that I'm having a baby.

"You're having a baby, and I'm not." He bent down to pick up the shards of the vase. "I don't know what to do with that."

"That's fair enough," Addison agreed, but she still looked sad and Derek felt guilty for some reason, even though he wished he didn't. Why did he feel guilty when she was the one who cheated on him? "I get that this is a lot to adjust to, but you're going to have to come to terms with this. You're not the only one who wishes things were different, but things are the way they are, Derek."

He sighed, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from her and running his hand through his hair. He'd already been through this conversation with Sam, and while punching the other man in the face had felt good, it hadn't made the situation any easier. Addison couldn't be happy with him for today's debacle, and he was starting to wonder if it wouldn't have been better if he'd just played nice with Sam and yapped about his feelings about the baby. He bristled, thinking about how Sam had lectured him on his attitude, and he had to make himself think about other things. Getting worked up at Sam was one thing, but he needed to at least try with Addison if he wanted to salvage their marriage.

"It's hard, Addison," he admitted, setting down the broken pieces of the vase onto the coffee table. "You know I've wanted kids for a long time, and now you're having one and it's not mine. I know you didn't plan it this way, but it's still difficult. If this was our baby, I would have been the one to go to doctors appointments with you and go out in the middle of the night to buy you pickles and ice cream or whatever crazy foods you were craving. But it's not my kid, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't even know if you're having a boy or a girl."

Addison moved over next to him and put a hand on his arm, lightly, as if she were afraid he was going to throw it off, and Derek wondered at how he must have made her so nervous around him. She still looked so sad, and before he could stop himself, he put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her.

She was still for a brief moment, just long enough for Derek to wonder if she was going to pull away, and then her hand was on the side of his head, turning his face toward hers, and she was kissing him back. She tasted good, just like she always had and that was comforting. Addison had changed so much, their marriage had changed so much, and it was soothing to know that at least one thing was still the same.

"I'm trying," he told her softly as he pulled away slowly, brushing his nose against hers in an Eskimo kiss. "I don't know how good a job I'm doing, but I want to make this work, Addison."

She didn't reply, but kissed him again, harder this time as she tugged at his T-shirt. He hesitated for a brief moment--he hadn't expected that she might want sex--but she was being quite insistent with the tugging, and the kissing had been very nice indeed so he obliged, pulling his shirt over his head and dropping it onto the floor.

"The pants too, ." Addison insisted, her hands fumbling with the buckle on his belt. He laughed as she cursed at the belt, yanking it impatiently. He'd always found it adorable when she swore at his clothing--he'd been with a number of girls in his lifetime, but the clothes swearing was something that seemed to be uniquely Addison. "Derek, it won't work right!"

"You really are most impatient," he teased her, patting her hair before unbuckling the belt and pulling it out of his jeans, dropping it on the floor beside his shirt. "There, is that better?"

"It will if you take off your pants," she pouted, giving him an imploring look. She was giving him that look, the one she used when she especially wanted something. It was remarkably effective and she knew it, although he would never admit it to her. Not that it needed admitting, since she knew anyhow, but a guy had to salvage some pride. "Derek, come on!"

He shook his head and reached for her, his surgeons fingers undoing the top half of the buttons on her shirt. "I think fair's fair, Dr. Shepherd, and it's your turn to remove an article or two of clothing. Or maybe all of them. All is good too." He reached to undo the rest of the buttons, but she pulled away, looking uneasy. "Addie, what's wrong?"

"I just…" she trailed off, her eyes flickering nervously to him, and away to the floor. She was twirling her hair with one finger the way she did when she was especially anxious about something, and Derek didn't understand how they had gone from the lighthearted mood of thirty seconds ago to now.

"You just what?" he probed, unsure as to whether he wanted to hear the answer. Maybe she was having second thoughts, about the sex or about everything in general. He could handle not having sex, he could wait for that, but he didn't quite know what to do if she said she wanted him to go back to New York.

"I just…" she trailed off again, sighing as she fiddled with the buttons on her blouse. "I just look different, that's all. You know, I'm pregnant and my body doesn't look the same as you're used to seeing it." She undid the remaining buttons and let her blouse hang open for a moment before sliding it off her shoulders and dropping it on the floor. Her eyes studied him nervously, waiting for his reaction.

His first thought was that she looked just like he'd imagined she would look like pregnant. Her breasts were fuller and while her stomach wasn't terribly large, the baby was definitely starting to make its presence known. Addison was still watching him, expecting him to do something, and he had no idea what to do.

He had to do something, though, so he stood up before pulling her to her feet as well. He pulled her into a hug, unsure as to whether she or he needed the comfort more. It was a little awkward, both physically and emotionally, but she smelled really good and her skin was warm and soft beneath his fingers.

When they pulled apart, she gave him a small smile and reached for his hand, placing it gently on her stomach. He felt awkward about it, to be honest, like he was touching something that didn't belong to him. He felt like he should pull away, but he didn't, and he wondered if the baby could feel his hand there. This was supposed to be his child inside Addison, and he didn't know what to do, knowing that it wasn't.

"I don't know how this happened," Addison murmured, her eyes soft and sad. Derek hated seeing her this sad--it had always gotten to him, and especially when he knew that he was the cause of it all. He had to try, he told himself. He wanted Addison, and if that meant accepting her child, then that was what he had to do. It still hurt to think about, but not trying just wasn't an option.

He kissed her again--the maneuvering was a little difficult, but they finally managed it okay--and reached for the zipper on her skirt. She shook her head and smiled shyly at him before unzipping it herself, letting it fall in a pile at her feet. She stepped out of it and kicked off her shoes, shoving those aside as well. "All right, Dr. Shepherd," she tried to smile, "your turn this time."

Derek obliged, stepping out of his jeans and dropping them in his heap of clothing on the floor. Their mutual hesitation was a tangible presence in the room, but there was also a mutual desire there, stronger than it had been in years. The sex between them had always been good, but the last few years it had seemed as if they were merely going through the motions. At least, he knew he had, Derek thought a little guiltily.

"Uh, would you rather do this in the bedroom?" Derek asked, feeling like he should give her the option, since that might be more comfortable for her, either physically or emotionally or both. Addison looked at him nervously, as though she was afraid he was changing his mind, and he regretted having brought it up. "I want to do this, I do, I just thought the bedroom might be easier."

"It's okay here," she assured him, giving him a small smile. "And you don't have to worry. You're not going to break me or anything."

"Okay," he agreed, kissing her again as he allowed his hands to roam along her body, caressing her back and the curves of her ass. He felt his dick begin to stiffen as he touched her, and he moaned slightly as he pressed closer against her. He'd forgotten how good it felt to hold her, and even though he would never admit it to anyone, he'd missed this a lot, especially over the last six months. He was still feeling a little hesitant, though, and Addison must have sensed it, since her body went tense against his.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Because if you don't, it's okay," Addison offered, her face betraying her uncertainty. It hurt to see her like this, to know that he was the cause of her hesitance, but he didn't know what to do. He was trying, but he kept picturing her and Sam together, the way he'd walked in on the two of them in the throes.

He was trying to push past those images, and it helped when he kissed her, so he did it again before reaching around behind her and undoing the clasp on her bra, pushing it away and off her shoulders until it dropped to the floor. Her breasts looked larger than he remembered--that happened to pregnant women, he knew, and he placed a hesitant hand on her left one, watching her closely to gauge her reaction.

"It's okay," she whispered, placing her hand over his and rubbing it gently as she brought his other hand to her right breast. He brushed his thumbs against her nipples, feeling them harden beneath his touch, and Addison's head fell back against her shoulders as she moaned softly.

He wanted to be closer to her, though, so he stepped around behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his head on her shoulder as he held her against him. Her stomach was firm beneath his fingers and he kept his hands there this time. Addison's pregnancy was still painful to him, horribly so at times, but it was also fascinating, in a way, the way her body had changed to support the new life growing inside of her.

"Derek?" Addison's head turned toward him and he loosened his grip on her, although keeping his hands lightly on her waist. She turned around so they were facing each other, her forehead pressed against his as she gave him a slow Eskimo kiss before smiling at him apologetically. "Actually, do you mind if we take this upstairs? It just seems like it might be more comfortable in a bed."

"Sure," Derek agreed quickly, taking her hand in his as he started toward the stairs. He didn't know if that seemed dorky or weird, but he was feeling uneasy here and not sure as to what to do. But he could do sex in their bed upstairs, sure. That shouldn't be a problem, right?

When they got to the bedroom, Derek pulled back the covers and let Addison climb in before going around the bed and climbing in on his side. They began kissing again and Derek felt like he should be doing something else, some foreplay, perhaps, although judging from Addison's response, she seemed to be enjoying the kissing just fine.

Addison nudged him in the shoulder. "Roll over," she whispered, pushing at his arm until he was lying flat on his back. She climbed on top of him, the ends of her long red hair brushing against his skin as he felt himself slide inside of her. This felt awkward and not like the old days, when they could barely keep their clothes on in order to go to classes or work or go visit their families or grocery shopping, any activities that required suitable attire. Derek had never dreamt that Addison would cheat on him, but time went on and people changed, and he of all people was painfully aware of that fact by now.

She still felt damn fantastic, though, and she looked all kinds of hot as she rocked her hips against him, moaning faintly as he placed his hands on her waist. If he could just shut off his brain, he could pretend that they were back in New York and the last five and a half months had been a bad dream. The baby Addison was carrying would be his, then, and Derek wanted that so much that it hurt, it physically hurt. Right here, right now, it was like a cruel mockery of everything he had always wanted.

"Derek," Addison moaned, her eyes closed as she continued to rock herself against him. He tried to tell himself to stop thinking, to just be in the moment and put everything off until later. Here he was, having sex with a beautiful woman, and he just couldn't get into it. There was something incredibly wrong with this picture.

To hell with it, Derek decided, resolving to shut off his brain and stop over-analyzing things. It would be beyond mortifying to be unable to finish this, and a little denial would make it a lot easier to get through the situation. Granted, it was sad that he needed to simply 'get through' having sex with Addison, but the situation was what it was, and he would enjoy this a lot more if he didn't keep thinking about Sam Bennett.

*******

Afterwards, Addison curled up next to him, lying on her side facing him. The sex had been good, but she still felt a little lost and sad, and realized that they were both mourning the end of something, and what they'd just had hadn't been just sex, but grief sex. This was the end of something, not necessarily their marriage--she hoped not their marriage--but of the life they'd planned together. She was having a baby and Derek wasn't, and she didn't know what to do with that any more than he did.

She loved her child already, she truly did, but she wondered if it made her a bad mother to wish that her baby's father was someone different. It was supposed to be Derek, it would have been Derek if she hadn't been so reluctant for all those years, but it wasn't now, and she wasn't sure if he could deal with that. He wanted to, she could see, and he was trying, which touched her a whole lot, since she knew how hard this must be for him. They had been strong once, and she just hoped that there was enough left of that strength in their marriage to get them through this.

"So, uh, do you have doctors appointments and stuff?" Derek wanted to know, reaching over to brush a lock of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. "Because I thought maybe, you know, I could come with you next time. If you want me to, that is."

Addison felt a smile spread across her face and she reached for his hand, squeezing it tightly. She knew how hard it must have been for him to ask, to do all the pregnancy stuff with her even though the baby wasn't his. "I have an appointment next Thursday, if you want to come." She hesitated, knowing what she needed to say next, but unsure of how he would react. It needed to be said, though, so she took a breath and braced herself for what his reaction might be. "Sam's coming too, but if it's okay with you, I'd really like you to be there."

He didn't reply, and Addison felt her heart sink. Of course he didn't want to go if Sam was going to be there. He probably thought the two of them went to all of these things together, playing happy couple, even though it wasn't like that at all. She should have just said yes and asked Sam later if he minded if Derek came in his place, except that would have meant hurting Sam and she didn't want to do that either.

Derek sighed heavily, rolling over onto his back and Addison knew she'd said the wrong thing. What else could she have done, though, that wouldn't have been dishonest? "I know this is hard for you," she offered timidly, feeling like she was stating the obvious. He'd wanted kids for years and now she was finally ready, but having another man's baby--of course it was hard for him! "I don't know what to do, Derek. I wish I did."

"Of course Sam's going," Derek muttered, clenching the sheets tightly in his fist. "Sam's the father, so he's going, I'm not the father but I can come too…what am I supposed to do with that, Addison? How am I supposed to react?"

It was a fair question and Addison sighed, knowing she'd likely just put her foot in her mouth. She had a feeling she should have handled the situation differently, except she didn't know what she could have done different and she had a feeling that she had better get used to things being this way because they weren't likely to change any time soon.

"I don't know, Derek," she admitted, deciding to go with the truth and hope that something good would come out of it. This was such a mess and it seemed to be getting more and more complicated all the time, but it had to sort out at some point, didn't it? It had to, if she was going to have all of them, Derek and her baby and Sam and Naomi in her life. Was it selfish to want that, was she trying to have too much that she didn't deserve? "I don't know how I would be if I was in your situation, if you were having a baby with another woman."

"Would you want to go to a doctors appointment with me and her?" Derek wanted to know, his expression a mixture of sadness and anger and hurt. "See us playing happy family together? Because I have to be honest with you, Addison, that doesn't sound like a hell of a lot of fun."

"It's not like that, Derek," she tried to protest, unsure if she could actually convince him of the truth when he was this hurt. He was right, she wouldn't want to see him playing happy family with another woman, even though she hadn't been doing that with Sam. She didn't know how to make him see that, though. "Sam comes to my appointments with me, yes, but so does Naomi, a lot of the time. Sam and I are just friends, Derek. There's nothing else between us."

"Yeah, I just bet you're friends," Derek scowled, crossing his arms across his chest. "That fucking I walked in on in New York? That looked really friendly to me. And friends knock each other up all the time, didn't you know?"

Addison sighed, not wanting to get drawn into another argument with him. She didn't want to fight with him about the baby, although at least fighting was a form of communication and wasn't it better that they talk about these things rather than letting them fester? The trouble was, she didn't know if Derek could deal with her having another man's child, and she didn't know if she could bear Derek not accepting it.

"I know," she agreed quietly, not knowing what else to say other than that she was sorry, which she'd already said about a thousand times, she thought to herself. "I made a huge mistake and I've wished every day that I'd done things differently, but I didn't and I don't know what to do to fix it or if it's even possible and I just don't know what to do or where to go from here."

To her horror, she felt the stinging onset of tears and blinked rapidly, not wanting to cry any more. She'd already been bawling her eyes out for months and the whole process was getting very repetitive. Not to mention, she didn't want Derek to see her cry and think that she was trying to emotionally manipulate him. All she wanted was to…well, she didn't know what she wanted, but she would love it if Derek would come with her to the doctor next week. Did she deserve him to, though, after everything she'd done?

"I don't know what you want from me, Addison," Derek told her, shaking his head. His voice sounded as uncertain as she felt and she could sense how precarious things were, how a few wrong words could send this whole house of cards tumbling down on top of them. "I'm trying, but this is a lot to take in, and to be honest, I don't know if it's something I'm capable of."

Addison bit her lip, trying not to cry at his words. He said that he didn't know if he was capable, she reminded herself, not that he wasn't capable and she had to remember to hold onto that little bit of hope, even if it likely meant that she was sad and pathetic. Otherwise, she didn't know if she could deal with the reality of knowing that her marriage was over, and here she was again, dwelling on all the negatives while ignoring Derek, who was right here, having a conversation with her.

"I know it's not," Addison told him quietly, deciding to go with the truth. He was right, it was a lot to take in, and she couldn't pressure or rush him or else he'd be gone. He had to make up his mind for himself, and whatever he decided, she would deal with it. "Do you want me to give you some time to think about it? You don't have to make up your mind right away."

"I'll go," Derek told her, putting a hand on her arm and giving her an uncertain smile. She could tell that he wasn't one hundred percent certain, but he was trying, and that meant a lot.


	6. Chapter 6

Naomi had been dreading this conversation ever since Addison had shown up three and a half months ago and announced that she was pregnant. She had hoped to put it off for a while longer, but Maya was starting to ask more and more questions about her aunt Addison having a baby, and the longer they waited to tell her, the worse it would be.

"Who should start the talking?" Sam wanted to know, taking a break from his pacing around the living room. He had been restless ever since she'd told him at work that they needed to talk to Maya, although he calmed down a bit when she promised him that she would do most of the talking. She didn't want to do this any more than he did, but she thought that their daughter might take the news a little better if it came from her.

Maya didn't know about the baby yet, but she knew her father had had an affair, although she didn't know that Addison was the other woman. She'd been devastated by her father's infidelity, and had barely spoken to Sam for months. Their relationship was just now starting to improve and Naomi was afraid that the news would send it back to square one.

Naomi had gone back and forth on the best way to break the news to Maya, and she still hadn't completely decided. Maya was due home from school in about ten minutes and neither she or Sam knew what they were going to say. This was going to be bad, so very bad.

"I'll start, but she's going to have questions for you, I'm almost certain, and you're going to have to assure her that you're not going anywhere," Naomi answered him, hoping that Sam would be able to convince their daughter that he didn't want to abandon them for Addison and her baby. That was a secret fear of Naomi's, to be honest, but she was trying to deal with her insecurities and make the situation work for all of them.

The front door opened, and Naomi heard the jingle of Maya's keys as the girl shut the door behind her and dropped her backpack by the hall table. "Mom? Dad?"

"In here, sweetheart," Naomi called, exchanging one last look with Sam. Then their daughter was in the room, looking uncertainly from one parent to the other. She was obviously confused, and they were about to make their daughter's life a lot more complicated, Naomi thought guiltily.

"Mom? Dad? What's going on?" Maya looked at her father warily before turning to her mother, and the fear in her eyes broke Naomi's heart. Maya had already been through so much already, and this was about to turn her world upside down all over again. "Did something happen? Am I in trouble?"

"Sit down, Maya," Sam told her, gesturing to a chair as he took a seat on the couch next to Naomi. He looked scared to death and Naomi squeezed his hand, hoping to reassure him. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble. Your mother and I just want to talk to you for a few minutes."

"You're getting a divorce," Maya said flatly, looking from one parent to the other. "That's it, isn't it? You're going to give me the talk about how you both love me very much even though you're not in love with each other, but you're both glad for the time you had together because it gave you me. And nothing much is going to change for me, except maybe that I'll have more time with both of you, because you've both realized that I'm the most important person in the world to you. Right?"

Naomi shook her head, letting go of Sam's hand to lean over and touch her daughter's arm. "We're not getting a divorce, sweetheart. I know you've been worried about that, but your father and I are working on our marriage and he's not going anywhere."

"No, I'm not," Sam assured her, nodding emphatically as he took Naomi's hand in his again. "I'm going to be right here with you and your mother."

"Then what's going on?" Maya wanted to know, looking more confused than fearful by now. "I don't get these serious talks unless there's something wrong, but I'm not in trouble and you're not getting a divorce, so I don't know what else there is."

Naomi sighed, wishing that she knew how to explain everything so Maya wouldn't get upset. Which wasn't possible, but she hoped there was a way that would do less damage, at least. Was there a less damage way of telling your thirteen-year old daughter that her favorite aunt's baby was going to be her half-sibling? "Maya, your aunt Addison is going to have a baby."

"So?" Maya shrugged nonchalantly, seemingly unupset by this news. Naomi wished it would all be this easy, but she sensed that Maya wouldn't be so easygoing when she knew the whole truth. "It's not like I didn't figure it out already, Mom. That's the big deal? Does she wants me to babysit?"

Naomi sighed and looked over at Sam, who sighed and nodded at her. She squeezed his hand tightly as she waited for him to speak, hoping for the best but at the same time bracing for the possibility that this might go very, very badly.

"Maya," Sam began slowly, sounding uneasy and Naomi thought that he must be terrified of their daughter's reaction. His and Maya's relationship had been shaky ever since the affair, and Naomi doubted that this news would make it any better. "Maya, your aunt Addison's baby is going to be your little brother or sister."

The girl blinked, looking confused by the news. "What do you mean, it's going to be my little brother or sister? Is Aunt Addison being a surrogate for you, or what's going on? Or is this just a joke? It's a joke, isn't it? Ha-ha, Dad, very funny."

Sam shook his head, and exchanged a glance with Naomi before turning back to their daughter. "No, she's not being a surrogate for us, sweetheart. What I meant to say was, I'm the father of your aunt Addison's baby."

********

It had been a long surgery and Addison had just gotten back to her office and started on the monumental task of catching up on her paperwork when she heard someone come into the room. She looked up, expecting to see Charlotte King or one of her other colleagues, or perhaps Derek. Instead, she was greeted by the sight of her goddaughter in her school uniform, looking visibly upset with tears running down her cheeks.

"How could you do this?" Maya demanded, her hands clenched at her sides. Addison got up from her desk and started to move toward her, but stopped as Maya moved away. "How could you and Dad do this to Mom? You slept with him! You're the reason they're having problems!"

Addison winced at the truth in the girl's words. Maya was absolutely right, Sam and Naomi's problems were her fault, and it hurt to see the girl this upset and know that she was the cause of that as well. "Maya, I don't know what to say except that I'm so sorry. I never wanted to cause problems for your mom and dad, or hurt you either."

"Yeah, well, that doesn't do a whole lot of good for Mom, does it?" Maya sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, and Addison held out the Kleenex box to her. The girl glared at her, but did take two tissues, using them to blow her nose. "You were her friend, and you betrayed her! What kind of a person are you?"

"I don't know," Addison admitted, feeling a little lost as to what to say or what to do to make things any better. She had to come up with something, though. She'd created this messy situation, she was the adult, and it was her responsibility to fix it. She just wished she knew how. "I guess all I can say is that sometimes grown-ups make mistakes, and your dad and I made a big one."

"A mistake?" Maya blinked, her expression one of disbelief. "A mistake is when you get caught speeding on the highway, or forget to balance your checkbook. It isn't fucking my dad and ruining my family!"

"No, it isn't," Addison agreed, hoping that she might be able to get the girl to calm down. Which was a tall order, given how upset Maya was, but she had to do something, had to try. "Maya, why don't we go down to the cafeteria and I'll buy you something to drink and we can talk some more?"

"What is that, a bribe?" Maya shook her head furiously, her hair swinging across her shoulders. "Sorry about fucking your dad, Maya, but can I buy you a Coke? I didn't mean to ruin your life, but here, have some cake? Yeah, right. You can't buy me stuff and make this all better."

Addison sighed. This was going nowhere fast, and about the only positive sign was that Maya was still here, and hadn't given her the finger and run out. There was still plenty of time for that to happen, so yeah, to say that this wasn't going well would be the understatement of the year.

"Oh, and just so you know, if you think I'm going to babysit or have anything to do with that baby, you're delusional. Maya glared at her, and it broke Addison's heart a little to see her goddaughter, Naomi's sweet little girl, hurting that much and know that it was all her fault.

********

There were times--lots of them, actually--when Naomi still wondered how the hell she got herself into this situation. Well, it wasn't like she got herself into this situation so much as it was that Sam and Addison too got her into it, but the one thing she'd figured out over the last number of months was that no one was completely blameless in this. Sam and Addison had made the biggest mistake, yes, but what happened between wouldn't have happened if Derek hadn't been working all the time, or if things had been on track between Sam and Naomi either.

It had been so tempting to play the injured party when Sam first told her about the affair, or when Addison came to Los Angeles to tell them both that she was pregnant. She was angry and hurt and feeling beyond betrayed by both of them and definitely not wanting to admit that she was partially to blame for what happened. It would have been so much easier to play the victim, but that would have meant divorcing Sam and ending her friendship with Addison, consequently losing two people very close to her, who possibly meant the most to her after Maya. She'd thought about it a lot, but refusing to forgive would have had a price tag that was more than she was willing to pay.

She'd spent most of the previous night with her daughter, trying to explain just that while attempting to comfort the girl, who had been very upset and spent most of the night in tears. Maya was terrified that Sam would leave them to live with Addison, and while Naomi would have been lying if she'd said she didn't worry about the exact same thing, the more rational part of her argued that if Sam was going to leave, he would have done it already. As awful as it sounded, part of her was glad at Sam's initial reluctance to get involved with his and Addison's child--if he was gung-ho over being a father again, he might have wanted to marry Addison and now she was getting paranoid.

Maya had eventually gone to sleep, albeit with quite a bit of crying, and Naomi felt awful at seeing her little girl so upset over everything. She'd known Maya wouldn't take the news well, but it still hurt to see her crying like that and asking if her father was going to leave. Naomi had heard from Addison that Maya had confronted her the previous day, although the conversation had been brief and didn't have much of a conclusion to it. Regardless, things were a gigantic mess and Naomi didn't know how to fix them.

That was the thing, everything in her world had fallen to pieces this last year and she didn't know how to pick them up. She didn't know how they had fallen in the first place, only that they had and that she was surrounded by shards of broken glass that pricked her fingers and made them bleed if she tried to pick them up. Which was very emo poetry of her, she thought, and why was she sitting around here thinking emo thirteen year old girl thoughts?

Regardless, she needed to do something about Sam and Derek. Sam had come home bleeding the other day after yet another fight with Derek, and was remarkably close-lipped about the whole thing. Naomi's secret fear was that Sam was jealous of Derek and that the two of them were fighting over Addison--she knew she was probably being ridiculous, and Sam had worked hard at showing he was sorry for the affair and that he wanted to make it up to her and Maya. Which sounded sweet, and she knew his intentions were good, but there were some things that couldn't be made up or undone and the hurt of the last six months was one of them.

She hadn't spoken much to Derek since he'd arrived in LA, and the most substantial conversation they'd had had been the one from four months ago when she'd called him to inform him of Addison's pregnancy. She regretted doing that--not only had it hurt both Derek and Addison, but it was just plain catty and not something she was terribly proud of doing. She wanted to undo it, but it wasn't something that could be undone and that seemed to be the truth of everything here.

She was in her office on Monday, catching up on some paperwork when she heard a knock and saw Derek at the door, looking hesitant and like he might change his mind and run out the door. She waved him in and got up from her desk, closing the door behind him before turning back to him, wondering why he'd come. "Hello, Derek, can I help you?"

"I don't know what to do." Derek dropped into a chair and sighed, stretching out his limbs and letting his head fall back against his shoulders. "I don't know what to do, Naomi, and you were the only person I could think of to talk to."

"Is everything okay?" Naomi asked, starting to get worried. Her first thought was that something had happened, but she would have heard if he and Sam had had another fight, and the impression she'd gotten from Addison were that things at home were going well, even if they were still a little tentative. "What's on your mind, Derek?"

"I don't know if I can do this." Derek got up and began to pace around the room, his hands stuffed into his pockets. "I've tried, I really have, but I don't know if I can see this through, Naomi. I don't know if I can be a big enough person to forgive Addison for what she did."

"Was there something that brought this on?" Naomi wanted to know, not sure of how exactly to go about this. Addison would be devastated if Derek left, and even though their friendship wasn't what it used to be, she didn't want to see her friend hurt, especially not that badly. She didn't want it to seem like she was taking sides, though, since Derek wouldn't respond too well to that and she wasn't exactly a Team Addison cheerleader even though they had rebuilt their friendship somewhat in recent months. "Did something happen?"

Derek shook his head. "It's more like this has been building up, I guess." He sighed, running his hand through his hair and making it look even more disheveled. "I also wanted to apologize for the fight with Sam the other day. I know I should know better, it's just…" He sighed again. "I don't know."

"I don't know either," Naomi admitted. She knew that wasn't very helpful, but she didn't have any answers, nothing nice and neat that she could tell Derek that would make this all better. How could she tell him that things would be all right if she didn't believe it herself? "I mean, it's a tough situation, you know? I want to make this work, I really do, but it's not easy."

"No, it isn't," Derek agreed, running a hand through his hair. "I'm trying, I really am, but I keep seeing my wife in bed with your husband, and that makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. That was…yeah, I don't know."

"It's hard to forgive something like that," Naomi agreed, trying not to think about the image of Addison and Sam together in the throes. It was a thought that had been tormenting her for months, and she didn't envy Derek's having actually seen it for himself. "I wish I knew what to tell you, but there don't seem to be any easy answers."

"Wouldn't it be nice if there were?" Derek grinned at her, an ironic kind of smile that Naomi could understand all too well. It was good to talk about this, with someone who could understand what she was going through. "If there was a magic wand you could wave to make everything the way it used to be? I don't think it works that way, though."

"No, not so much," Naomi agreed, sighing heavily. Derek nodded but didn't say anything, and she sat down in her chair, trying to come up with something better to say. She didn't have much in terms of reassuring words, and she didn't know if said words even existed in a situation like this.

*******

The thing with fucking up, Addison had found, was that once you did it, it was out there as public knowledge and would likely be resurrected time and time again. Things could be rocky for a while, good discussions could be had about them, they were seemingly resolved, but the next time something happened, the whole mess would come up all over again as if it had never been worked through in the first place. Which Addison could understand, really--some things were hard to forgive, and maybe it was easier to stop fighting it and simply accept that things were the way they were and that some sins really and truly couldn't be forgiven.

Which was a hard realization to come to, since Addison missed her friendship with Naomi terribly and wanted so much for things to go back to the way they were. She would think about how things had been before the affair, before she'd shattered Naomi's trust, and all she could think about was how *rich* she'd been then, to have a friend like that, someone who cared about her so much and who Addison could turn to no matter what.

That was gone now, and Addison was still in the process of mourning that loss. She still felt lost and scared when she thought about the fact that she would be a mother in a matter of months, and she ached to talk about it with her best friend, except that Naomi wasn't her best friend anymore and even apart from that, it would be too awkward to confide in her about her feelings, how she'd fucked up by sleeping with Naomi's husband. Some subjects were just too painful to discuss between them, and some sins were just too much to be forgiven.

She counted herself lucky that Naomi still talked to her at all, after what she'd done, and most of the time she wondered why that was. Naomi was a bigger person than she was, Addison thought, since she didn't know if she would have the ability to forgive a betrayal like that. Well, she knew she wouldn't, which meant that Naomi's friendship was something she was damn lucky to have, even if it wasn't how it used to be.

She would do it all differently if she had the opportunity. She wouldn't have gotten drunk, she wouldn't have fucked Sam, and she certainly wouldn't have betrayed her friend like that. It seemed so easy now, to think that she could have had a nice, platonic time with Sam and kissed him on the cheek when they said goodnight and that it would have been it, no painful betrayals or messy complications. It was so incredibly simple in retrospect and Addison wondered what the hell was wrong with her that she couldn't have seen it then, or even worse, that she'd seen it and done it anyhow.

Addison didn't really consider herself a bad person--or at least, she hadn't considered herself as such, but she'd done a lot of bad things and maybe that did make her a bad person. Maybe 'heartless bitch' really was a more apt description for her than 'lonely, scared, and fucked up.' Kissing her best friend's husband would have been 'lonely, scared, and fucked up.' Fucking him--in her marital bed, no less--was well into 'heartless bitch' territory.

On the surface, things with Naomi seemed similar to what they were before, but there was something different about it all the same. Some essential element had shifted in the last six months and while Addison didn't like it, there wasn't exactly much she could do about it. It was sad and it was hard and it broke her heart to realize, but she didn't know if she and Naomi were capable of moving on from this.

Sometimes Addison wondered if things would have been easier or harder without the pregnancy. It had to be excruciating for Naomi to see her like this, carrying Sam's baby, and the child would be a permanent reminder of a painful chapter in all of their lives. It wouldn't be possible to simply pretend like it had never happened, and while Addison knew intellectually that pretending wouldn't be any good, emotionally it sounded pretty damn good.

Naomi was definitely trying, Addison could see, at least, she was in regards to the baby. She'd come along to more than one checkup, and even came with Addison to buy baby clothes. Most women wouldn't have done that, Addison knew, bought baby clothes for the woman who was having her husband's adulterous love child, and that just spoke to how big a person Naomi really was.

Sam and Naomi had helped her get the nursery put together, although it was still a long ways from complete, and work on it had stalled since Derek's arrival a month ago. Sam and Derek couldn't be in the same room with each other without throwing punches, it seemed, and Addison felt shy about asking her husband to help with the decorating, even though she knew it was important and that she should ask him. Yes, there was a chance he might say no, but she needed to give him that opportunity, to make him feel included in this. Derek was trying, and she needed to give him the chance to be involved in her child's life, especially since he would be the baby's stepfather. That was, if he wanted to be, and that was something that still kept Addison awake nights from time to time.

Things with Derek were still awkward, but seemed a little better than they used to be. They'd been having sex fairly regularly, and while there was still some mutual hesitation, the sex was good and they seemed to be getting closer. There was still a part of him that was closed off, though, and on the few occasions when she'd timidly tried to bring up the subject of the affair, Derek had shut her down, either changing the subject or retreating into himself so that it was impossible to have any kind of meaningful discussion.

To be fair, she was almost as evasive as he was, and their attempts at talking about anything substantial almost always turned into sex. Which was okay in one way, since the sex was good and the pregnancy hormones seemed to be making her want to have it all the time, but she knew that avoiding their issues wasn't going to lead anywhere good and that not talking about stuff would only make things harder in the long run.

Addison missed having someone to confide in--she used to talk to Derek, back in the days when their marriage was so solid that they would laugh at the idea of anything coming between them and the concept of sleeping with someone else was so foreign to her that she would have been so hurt and angry with anyone who suggested that she might do something like that. She missed Naomi too, and while she knew that they needed to talk, she was too afraid to bring up the subject for fear of making things worse. She supposed she could talk to Sam, since he was in the same boat as she was, but that seemed too awkward, not to mention that it would most likely make things even more complicated with Naomi and Derek.

She'd spent the last two hours tossing and turning, with Derek sound asleep beside her. Part of her wanted to wake him up, but that would only lead to more awkwardness--what could she say to him? It wasn't like he didn't know things were weird, and three o'clock in the morning was hardly a time to be having serious discussions. So she got up instead, putting on her robe and slippers and going downstairs, letting herself out on the patio. Fresh air might help her sleep, and anyhow, anything was better than lying awake in bed, dwelling on the same thoughts over and over again.

She could hear the waves lapping against the shoreline, and there was a faint gleam of moonlight reflected on the water. She contemplated going for a walk along the beach, but instead decided to sit out on the patio and wait to become sleepy again. It was good to get outside, even for a little while, and what was the point of having a house on the beach if one didn't take advantage of it?

"Addison?" She turned at the sound of her name, expecting to see Derek, but there was no one else out on her patio and besides, she would have heard the door open if it was him. She looked around and finally spotted Sam standing out on his deck, waving at her. "What are you doing out here?"

"I couldn't sleep," she shrugged, a part of her hoping that Derek would stay sleeping and not come outside looking for her, since she didn't know what he would make of this situation. Nothing good, in any case, she thought guiltily, even though she knew there was nothing for her to feel uneasy about. She wasn't doing anything wrong, and she and Sam were neighbors--their paths were bound to cross from time to time. "How about you?"

"Same thing," Sam agreed, smiling apologetically as he ran his hand across his head. "Naomi's back at the house with Maya tonight, and I never sleep so well without her."

"Derek sleeps like the dead," Addison told him, glancing back up at her bedroom window. This was typical of their relationship now, she thought to herself. It hadn't been more than thirty seconds since their conversation had begun and already their significant others had come up in conversation. "Of course, it's easier to sleep when you don't have a little person inside of you kicking your kidneys whenever she feels like it."

"She?" Sam arched an eyebrow at her, walking toward her with a confused expression on his face. "You know that we're having a girl?"

"Just a hunch," Addison assured him, not wanting him to think that she'd snuck around behind his back to the doctor's and found out the sex of their child without telling him. "I'm assuming we'll find out on Thursday, if we want to know."

"Do we want to know?" Sam asked, studying her for her reaction. Addison didn't know if he had a preference or not--she suspected that he might, but he would never tell unless she said hers first, and even then, if hers differed from his, he would acquiesce without letting her know what he was actually thinking. Sam was very passive, she'd noticed--he was a good man, but he wasn't very decisive or very open about his wants and needs.

"I don't know, do we?" Addison grinned at him, noting the brief look of frustration that flashed across his face. She was going to get him to state a preference, one way or the other. "I mean, it would be nice to know what color to paint the nursery walls, but on the other hand, it would be fun to be surprised and there are always gender neutral like green and yellow."

"Maybe it's easier not to know?" Sam offered timidly. "I mean, better not to know. Just that like you said, it would be fun to be surprised, and it's not like we won't know whether our baby is a boy or girl after it's born."

Addison bit her lip, taking a moment to digest Sam's words. She didn't know what he meant by easier not to know, but she had her hunches. Maya was still upset over the baby, from what Addison had heard from Naomi, and a little brother might be easier for her to accept. Addison was secretly hoping for a girl, but regardless, she would love her child no matter what its gender. She knew Sam would too, but in any case, she could wait and be surprised. Even though she could tell already that she was having a girl. Mothers knew these things.

"Or we could find out on Thursday," Sam said hurriedly, apparently mistaking her silence for disagreement. "Either way is fine with me. I mean, you're the one carrying the kid, so you should get to choose whether or not we find out."

"We can wait," Addison assured him, touching him lightly on the arm. "We'll just go on Thursday and see that we have a healthy baby, okay? We don't have that much longer to wait anyhow."

"Okay," Sam agreed, smiling at her briefly before hesitating, his gaze falling down to her stomach. "Do you think I could…"

Addison smiled at him. His shyness was cute, and she was touched that he was taking such an interest in their child. She knew he hadn't necessarily wanted to be involved at first, even if he and Naomi hadn't said as such, but he seemed to have warmed to the idea of becoming a father again over the last few months. "You want to say hi?" She picked up his hand and placed it gently on her belly, leaving her hand on top of his. "The baby's asleep right now, though--he or she likes to doze off after waking Mommy up, I think."

"Kid, you need to let your mom get some rest, okay?" Sam knelt down so he was eye-to-eye with her stomach, his hand still resting gently upon it. "She's a busy lady, and she needs her rest, especially since I suspect you're not going to let her get much once you're here."

Addison laughed, shaking her head at the thought of all the sleepless nights she had coming to her once her child arrived. This was nice, she thought to herself, that she and Sam could get along and raise their child together without becoming bitter adversaries like some parents. It wasn't a traditional way of having a family, she knew, but if things worked out, their child might have four parents. Maybe things would turn out okay, if she let herself believe that they might.

********

"I think I should adopt the baby."

Addison looked up to see Derek staring intently at her, waiting for a response. She had none, at least, not yet, since this had come out of the blue and she still wasn't sure she'd heard right. "What did you say, Derek? I don't think I caught that."

"I think I should adopt the baby," he repeated, his face a little uncertain but his voice firm and confident. He looked nervous, like he was afraid she would say no, and Addison honestly didn't know what to tell him. "I mean, I'm practically going to be its father anyhow, and it would be nice if we were all officially a family, you know?"

"You want to adopt the baby?" Addison wasn't sure what to make of his request, but she could feel a smile spreading across her face as she realized the importance of what he was saying. More than anything she wanted to be a family with Derek and her child, and Derek's adopting the baby would solidify that, make everything official. She wanted to say yes right away, but she knew that Sam would have to have a say in this and she had no idea whether he would agree or not.

If it had been four months ago when she'd first told him she was pregnant, she had little doubt that Sam would have agreed without hesitation. He hadn't wanted to get involved at first--Addison had sensed that, and although Naomi hadn't confirmed it outright, it hadn't been too hard to tell from what she said--and what she didn't say either. He'd been making an effort since then, though, going to doctors appointments with her and helping to decorate the nursery and everything else, and she got the sense that he was getting really attached to this baby. She honestly didn't know how he would feel about being asked to sign away his parental rights to Derek.

Sam and Derek still didn't have the best relationship--strained would be a positive spin on it, Addison privately thought--but there hadn't been any more fistfights, which was definitely an improvement, and the four of them had gone to a doctor's appointment the previous Thursday, which had been all kinds of interesting to say the least. The tension had been thick in the room, with Derek holding onto her hand and shooting more than one dirty look at Sam, but everyone had been civil and polite and that was as much as she could have asked for, Addison figured. Maybe things would get better later on, but regardless, the two men not being physically violent was very much of the good.

"Well, yeah, I want to adopt it," Derek agreed, his voice taking on a slightly pleading tone that he tended to use when there was something he especially wanted. "It's yours, and I love you and want us to be a family. We can make this work, Addie, I know we can."

Addison's breath caught in her throat at his words. He'd just said everything she'd longed to hear and was afraid she never would, that he loved her and that he wanted her baby and for them to be a family. She'd given up hope of ever getting that, and yet here he was, telling her just that. She wanted to say yes right away, that he could adopt her baby and that they could all officially be a family. It was everything she wanted in the world, and she wondered how upset Sam would be if she told him about Derek's request.

Derek was still waiting for a response, looking so eager and hopeful that she hated telling him that they had to wait, that she had to talk to Sam first. Maybe it would be easy and Sam wouldn't mind, she thought hopefully. After all, he hadn't wanted to be too involved in the first place, and while he'd gotten considerably more active as of late, she still sensed a hesitance in him, like he was trying because it was the right thing to do, but that his efforts stemmed more from Naomi's urging and a desire to please her than it did a true wish to be involved in their child's life.

"Come on, Addie, I'll be a good dad," Derek pleaded, taking her hand in his and holding it tightly. The way he looked was reminding her of their discussions from years ago, where he would tell her he wanted children and she was so scared at how much she wanted it that she ended up saying no, not yet, she wasn't quite ready but soon. Derek had wanted to be a father ever since she met him, and he'd been clear about that from their first serious discussion, where they'd discussed what they wanted out of their relationship and out of life.

She'd gotten herself into trouble and almost thrown away her marriage because she kept putting him off, Addison thought regretfully. If she'd agreed to start a family ten years ago--well, maybe not ten years ago, since they would have been right in the middle of their internships, which had been decidedly hellish--but five years ago, even two years ago, really, things would have been so much different. It wasn't that she didn't want children, she was just scared because she didn't know if she would be a good mother and she didn't want to bring a child into the world if she was just going to fail him or her.

She was still scared to death, to be honest, but she was also excited, something she hadn't anticipated when Derek had started pleading his case to start a family. She'd delivered hundreds of babies, she knew how to save their lives from any number of life-threatening illnesses, she thought she understood the bond between a mother and her child and yet she hadn't really gotten it until she'd gotten pregnant herself and experienced things on the other side.

"All right," she agreed before she could stop herself. She knew she should talk to Sam about this, and that he would be all kinds of upset that she'd agreed to let Derek adopt their child without having even consulted him, but maybe he wouldn't mind so much, maybe things would work out okay after all. After all, she'd thought her marriage was over, but then Derek had come after her, they'd been working on their marriage, and while she didn't think he would ever be okay with the fact that she'd slept with Sam, he wasn't so angry that he couldn't forgive her, or want to end their marriage.

"Really?" Derek looked so excited, like she'd just given him something incredibly precious and now she was getting truly and utterly sappy, she realized. Which perhaps she was, but she was just so happy and she pushed thoughts of Sam out of her mind, figuring that she would deal with that tomorrow.

********

"Here." Sam looked up to see a manila envelope flop down onto his desk, and Derek Shepherd's face smirking at him. There was something in the other man's expression that made Sam's hackles go up, but he tried to calm himself down, telling himself that getting into yet another fistfight with Derek wasn't going to be good for anyone involved. "You need to sign these."

"And what exactly is it that I'm signing?" Sam wanted to know, picking up the envelope and shaking its contents lightly as he warily looked at Derek. He wasn't sure what had prompted this, but nothing good would come out of it, he was certain. He would be better off not reading them, he thought, except that wouldn't go over well with either Addison or Naomi. God, what a mess they were all in.

"Nothing much, really," Derek shrugged, and Sam wondered if the other man was trying to pick a fight or if his intentions were genuine. Regardless, he hadn't seen what was inside the envelope yet and he had a feeling that whatever it was, he wasn't going to like it very much at all. "Just some papers."

"Papers for what?" Sam looked intently at Derek, Derek stared back, and when he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere that way, he opened the envelope and pulled out the papers but didn't look at them, choosing instead to keep his gaze on Derek. He still didn't like the guy very much, but he'd promised Naomi he would try to get along with him better, and from what he understood from what Naomi had told him, Derek had promised Addison the same thing.

He didn't know if he was ever going to be president of the Derek Shepherd fan club, or if they would be able to patch up their friendship the way Addison and Naomi were attempting to do. There was a lot of water under the bridge between the two of them, and Sam didn't know if those obstacles were too much to overcome. They'd been friends before, but not necessarily best friends--Sam had liked Derek just fine, but he had the feeling that their relationship had been more because their wives were such good friends. Then there was the business with Sam sleeping with Derek's wife, which definitely hadn't endeared him to the other man. Yeah, this was one extremely messy situation right here.

One of the things he'd come to see, though, after numerous talks with Naomi and one or two with Addison as well, was that he and Derek had to get along if this whole situation was going to work. Even though he hadn't appreciated getting punched in the face on multiple occasions, Derek was going to be his child's stepfather, if things worked out with him and Addison. He didn't want his child to be exposed to simmering hostility between the two men, and he was pretty sure that Addison didn't want that either. Actually, he knew that Addison didn't want that because she'd told him after the second altercation, in no uncertain terms, that he and Derek needed to get their act together and behave like grown men or else she would kick both of their asses.

"Look, Derek, I know you don't like me very much," Sam offered, hoping that he wouldn't inadvertently antagonize the other man, since he had a feeling that he would be sleeping on the couch for the next month if he got into another fistfight with Derek Shepherd. "But we're going to have to get along for the kid's sake, and you're going to be his or her stepfather, so I'd like for us to be on good terms."

"I couldn't agree more," Derek said agreeably, to Sam's surprise. That wasn't what he had been expecting at all--the last time he'd tried to talk to Derek, the two of them had ended up brawling and making a huge mess out of Addison's living room. He wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though--if Derek wanted to play nice, Sam was all for it. "I know I've been an ass, and I can't say that I'm not still royally pissed at you, but the baby is important to Addison and Addison is important to me."

Sam wondered if he had told Addison that--it was none of his business, but she'd been so sad after she'd come to Los Angeles, before Derek showed up, and he thought she might like to hear that she was important to Derek. Not that he was going to say that, though--he doubted Derek Shepherd would appreciate his giving him marital advice, and he didn't want a repeat of their last fight. Naomi would be pissed, and Addison too, and the last thing he wanted was two angry women after him.

Regardless, this was good news, if Derek wanted to be the stepfather to his baby. Sam was still wary of the other man, to be honest, and even though he knew Derek was most likely making a gesture of goodwill, he was still suspicious of his motives. He didn't know that there wasn't some kind of nasty surprise in store, even though he couldn't think of what it might be. He was probably just being paranoid.

"Well, Derek, that's very big of you," Sam told him, standing up and extending his hand. Derek didn't take it and there was an uneasy moment between the two of them, but Sam took his hand back and told himself that it was okay, that he wouldn't want to shake Derek's hand if the situation was reversed, if Derek had slept with Naomi. "I understand, but I'm glad we had this talk."

"I am too," Derek agreed pleasantly, and now Sam was definitely suspicious. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something off and he didn't trust Derek's motives at all. There was just something too weird about the situation, and he didn't know what he could do except wait for it. It was coming soon, there was no way around it, and he didn't expect that he would like it one bit. "So if you could sign those and get them back to me, that would be great."

Sam eyed the other man warily, opened the envelope, and pulled out the papers.


	7. Chapter 7

"How could you?" Sam demanded, barging into Addison's office without so much as a hello. His body was tense, his jaw was set, and Addison could tell that he was really and truly pissed off. "What were you thinking, telling Derek he could adopt our child? You didn't even ask me!"

"I was going to," Addison pleaded, knowing how weak her excuse must sound. The truth was she'd been so surprised and happy when Derek brought up the subject of the adoption that she hadn't even thought about consulting Sam or getting his input on the matter. Which she should have done, and she sure as hell shouldn't have made any promises to Derek. "I'm sorry, Sam, I wasn't thinking."

"You bet you weren't thinking," Sam growled, not looking any happier with her. "This is my child, Addison, and I get that you and Derek are trying to work, I really do. But that doesn't mean I want him adopting our baby. I'm the father, and I'm not signing away my parental rights so that Derek can take my place."

"I just thought it would make things easier," Addison tried to explain, and the expression on Sam's face made it clear that she wasn't making much headway with her goal. There wasn't a good way to explain, really. She had fucked up, pure and simple, and there wasn't any way of getting around it. "I mean, Derek's going to be the baby's stepfather, and you and I live right next door to each other, Sam. We're all going to be one family anyhow, when you think about it."

"I get that Derek's going to be a presence in our child's life, Addison." Sam shook his head, looking less angry but more sad, which wasn't any improvement. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but it was clear that she had done just that. "I'm fine with that, I really and honestly am. I want him to have a good relationship with our baby, but Derek's not the father, Addison."

"No, he's not." Addison shook her head, acknowledging the truth in Sam's words. She should have talked to Sam about all of this beforehand, and maybe part of her had been afraid that he would say no. Or maybe she had been afraid he would say yes, but regardless, she had been afraid of something and she'd taken the cowards way out."

"But you want him to be," Sam continued, the expression on his face one she couldn't quite figure out. Maybe that was for the best, since she already felt shitty enough about herself as it was. "Tell the truth, Addison. You would give a hell of a lot for this baby to be Derek's instead of mine."

Addison lowered her eyes, not sure of what to say in response to that. Sam was absolutely right, she did want Derek to be the father, and she didn't know what that said about her, but she suspected that it wasn't anything to be proud of, in any case. She couldn't help wishing for it anyhow, even though she knew it was impossible as well as, she suspected, rather mean.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Sam muttered, looking down at his feet and kicking at the carpet with one foot. He looked obviously hurt now, and Addison felt guilty about that. Sam was a good man, he was a good father, and she could do a lot worse when it came to baby daddies. "Thanks, Addison, you really know how to make a guy feel all shiny and special."

"Sam, it's not like that," Addison protested weakly, even though she knew that he was dead on when it came to her feelings on the matter. She wished she could feel differently about this, or even that she knew how to feel. She regretted the affair, but she didn't regret her child, and she didn't know what it said about her that the conception was a result of the worst mistake of her life. "It's complicated."

"You think this is easy for me either?" Sam wanted to know, raising his eyes so that they were looking directly into hers. "You think I don't have regrets or wish that things were different? You're not the only one who feels that way, Addison, but trying to shut me out of our child's life…how would you feel if the situation were reversed and I wanted you to sign away your parental rights to Naomi?"

"How do you want me to feel, Sam?" Addison demanded, starting to get angry herself. "Don't pretend that I don't know Naomi was the one who pushed you into the whole fatherhood thing. Believe me, you were far from thrilled when I told you I was pregnant. Somehow, I don't think you went home and passed out cigars afterward."

"How was I supposed to react?" Sam wanted to know, beginning to pace back and forth across her office. He was starting to look agitated and Addison found herself wishing that she could fast-forward past this conversation so that she could be alone to figure everything out. "You just showed up and dropped this bombshell on me and yes, it was a surprise and no, I didn't know what to do at first, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to be involved or that I'm going to just sit back and let Derek take over my role in our child's life."

"Sam, I've already said that I'm sorry," Addison protested, although she knew that he was absolutely right. She'd fucked up the situation like she'd fucked up lots of things, and now Sam was hurt in addition to Derek's being hurt when she told him that he couldn't adopt her child. Naomi was bound to be upset with her as well, and this was all just a huge, messy situation that she didn't know how to fix. All she wanted was to give her child a stable home and loving family, and she seemed to be fucking that up at every turn.

Her baby kicked her just then and she rubbed her stomach, hoping that her child--their child--hadn't heard its parents arguing and gotten upset. Not like a little acrobatics was out of order--she was carrying a very active baby and she'd lost sleep many nights because her little boy or girl decided to play soccer in her womb--but she was getting agitated and the stress wasn't good for the baby, she knew. She didn't want to let down her child before it was even born.

********

It was the waiting that was the worst part, really, since there wasn't much to do in form of distractions. All there was was the ticking of the clock, and the sounds of labored, shallow breathing, albeit slightly more peaceful ever since the morphine kicked in. Derek would sit by his father's bedside counting the breaths and wondering how many more his father had left. Every so often there was an intermittent spasm of coughing, sometimes dry, sometimes not, but always nasty.

It had been years since his dad's death, over twenty, really, but he still had nightmares about it. Not every night, or every year, even, but not rarely either. He would wake up in a cold sweat, on the verge of tears or sometimes actually crying and Addison would have to pull him close and he'd hold her until he stopped shaking and could tell her what was wrong. She always knew just how to calm him down, and he hadn't known what he would do without her. Well, he found out, once she was gone. He couldn't stop crying and his thoughts were racing, his heart pounding in his ears so loudly that he wondered if he was having a panic attack or a full-blown heart attack. He was so worried that he called his best friend Mark to come over and evaluate him. Mark arrived twenty minutes later and let Derek know that while he hadn't had a heart attack, he was in pretty shitty shape nonetheless and he needed to figure out what to do about Addison because he'd been a mess ever since she'd left.

Derek was inclined to ignore his friend's advice--the last thing he wanted was to think about Addison--but a week later the divorce papers showed up. His first instinct was to sign them immediately, send them back, and get on with his life, especially since she was likely playing happy family with Sam fucking Bennett out in California. But when it came down to it, he just couldn't sign the damn papers. He didn't know how much of that was due to any lingering feelings he had for his wife and how much was just his determination not to let Sam win, but nonetheless, to California he went and in California he stayed.

Maybe another part of it was that he didn't want things to end the way they had, with tears and angry words and--he was beyond ashamed to admit it, or even think of it--the way that he'd grabbed Addison's arm and physically pulled her out of the house and out into the rain. There was just no excuse for that--no matter what Addison had done or how hurt he was, that was no way to treat a woman and especially not a woman he loved. He didn't want that to be their last memory of them together, of him hurting her and hearing a crying Addison plead with him from the other side of the glass.

The fact of the matter was, he was in love with his wife for better or for worse, and he didn't want their marriage to end without knowing that he'd done everything possible to salvage it. Addison had hurt him badly, to the point where even breathing was immensely painful at times, but he had loved her once and that wasn't something that went away, even though he wanted it to, more than anything. Life would be so much easier without these feelings, but regardless, here they were.

It wasn't just Addison he loved now, though. As much as it surprised him, and as much as he hadn't wanted this to happen, he'd started to feel something when Addison put her hand on his stomach and let him feel the baby kick beneath his touch, and he'd felt something that felt like paternal pride when he went along to Addison's ultrasound with her. He wasn't sure about the second one--was it possible to feel paternal pride when he wasn't the father--but he definitely felt something for the baby, even though he kept reminding himself that it wasn't his child, but the product of Addison and Sam's one-night stand.

It was getting hard to remember, though, when he could feel the baby kicking every time he talked to it, and he knew from being married to Addison that fetuses were capable of hearing. He knew all the basics of pregnancy as a result of being married to one of the best OB/GYNs in the country, but Addison's pregnancy fascinated him in a way that no textbook ever could. She was growing a person inside of her, a living, breathing creature, and he couldn't help but think about how cool that really was.

Sometimes he even let himself think about stuff further down the line, like taking the kid fishing, or playing tea parties, if it was a girl. Definitely fishing, though, since it was something he'd always loved to do and something he wanted to pass along to his child. It was always sobering to think that he wasn't the father, and that it was Sam's baby and not his.

Perhaps it could be his, though. Biologically there was nothing he could do--the conception had taken place months and months ago--but he could always adopt the baby, and he and Addison could raise it as a Shepherd. Biology wasn't everything and adoption would make them all one family, him and Addison and the baby. Then he really could be Daddy instead of Uncle Derek, and he'd get to be there to kiss all the skinned knees better and lay down the law about curfew and do the tuck-ins at night where he would read his child's favorite bedtime story and check underneath the bed to make sure there were no monsters hiding beneath it.

The more Derek thought about this, the more he wanted it, and he decided to bring it up with Addison the next chance he got. It would solve all their problems, and he really thought that this could be a positive thing for their marriage. He wasn't entirely sure how Addison would react, but he didn't see her having any problem with it, since they were working on their marriage. He was still nervous, but also excited as he waited for the right time to ask her if he could adopt her child.

Derek didn't look forward to getting old, but the more time went on and the more he saw, he started thinking that he would be lucky if he managed to get old. There were just so many different ways to die, some quick and some slow, some painless and some extremely unpleasant. He remembered his dad saying something once, when Derek was a boy, that there was a calendar somewhere marked with the day that you were going to die. Later on, Derek would remember this and thinking about how September 10th had been his father's day, and wonder what his would be.

He knew hospitals all too well by now, the white linoleum and the sounds sneakers made when they squeaked across the floor. There were the oxygen tanks and the cheap, rubber-soled slippers and the sterile white walls that looked clean but also horribly impersonal. There were white coats and stethoscopes and he knew them well, he was a doctor after all, but it was so very different when he was on the other side of things and not in a position of power to have people wait hours for you to come and say a few words. He could heal patients, but sometimes he failed, and even then that wasn't as bad because he'd learned how to shrug off the what-ifs and move on to his next case without wondering if the patient would have lived if he'd just done something differently. At least he was the one in the position of power, he had the patient's life in his hands and he wasn't at the mercy of someone else waiting and wanting to know *something* and just waiting for the other person to die.

That was what was wrong with this situation. Waiting was never fun, but it was a little more tolerable when it was for something good, if you were six years old and in line for the teacups ride at Disneyland. That was the good kind of waiting because your persistence paid off and you got something you really wanted, whereas with this, all you got for your efforts was losing someone you loved. There was nothing worse than that feeling, the waiting for the inevitable and knowing that you were going to have a huge gaping hole torn into your soul that was never going to heal. Yeah, that was a great deal. Thank you so very fucking much.

It just wasn't fair, that's what it wasn't. His dad didn't deserve this, his uncle didn't deserve this, and while it might sound incredibly self absorbed of him, Derek didn't think he deserved it either. Granted, he wasn't perfect, and he had a lot of flaws, actually, but he didn't think he was such a bad person that the people he loved would all either betray him or else die. He wasn't thrilled with Addison by any means, he wasn't sure if he even liked her half the time, but he would be broken up if anything happened to her, and he wouldn't admit it to anyone but he was scared half to death about what might happen to her when she had the baby.

Thanks to being married to one of the foremost neonatal surgeons in the country for over a decade, Derek knew all about the dangers pregnant women faced, and the fact that Addison was in her late thirties made him even more apprehensive. He didn't know anything about the doctor who was going to be delivering her baby, but chances were that he or she wouldn't be as good as Addison was, and what would happen then? If only Addison could deliver her own baby, he would feel a lot more at ease, but that wasn't exactly an option and Derek felt like he was getting jumpier and more scared as each day passed. As it was, he had grilled the poor woman who had been delegated with delivery duty, until Addison threatened to lock him up in the hall closet at home while she went on her doctors visits, to avoid him scaring away every OB/GYN in the entire Los Angeles area.

He hated not knowing, he hated being powerless and he didn't know what he was supposed to do in situations like these. There was only so much a person could do, he knew that, but he'd always thought that he should be above that, that he could do anything if he truly set his mind to it and the worst part was that he believed it to the point where he felt a crushing sense of failure when the inevitable came. He had a dream once, about Addison dying during the delivery and he'd woken up and been completely frozen in place, terrified, and not even the sight of Addison lying two feet away, sleeping peacefully was enough to take away the chill that the dream had brought upon him.

Derek knew he was likely being silly--women had babies every day, most with minor to no problems during the delivery, and for every one of Addison's patients who had had a hard time, there were god knew how many more women in the world who had no problems whatsoever. The thing was, though, it wasn't so much the fact that there was any great danger Addison was in--yes, childbirth was never one hundred percent certain and he was anticipating her to be in a good amount of pain, even though Addison swore that she was going to be taking every drug that was offered to her--as it was that the chance was there that things could go wrong and he quite frankly didn't know what he would do if they did.

As much as he didn't want to, as much as he wished he could just forget her and move on with his life, the problem was that he was in love with Addison, painfully so, to the point where the thought of living his life without her in it made him physically hurt. Even after everything that had happened between them, the fact remained that there had been a time when he'd thought of her as his best friend, or even as the love of his life. That very possibly might still be true, even though it made him feel nauseous to look at her. The sight of her and Sam together made his blood boil, and he kept replaying the image of the two of them in bed together over and over in his mind until he thought he might go crazy.

So why was he still here? The painfully simple but extremely difficult to acknowledge answer was that he was still in love with her, and he had a feeling that his thinking was now running together with his thoughts turning circles in his head, obsessing on the same facts until he finally went insane. He hated her, she was his curse and a soul-sucking succubus but the unfortunate fact of the matter was that he couldn't live without her.

"Derek, why are you staring at me?" Addison cracked open an eye, peering at him blearily. Her hair was rumpled from sleep and Derek wondered how awake she actually was, or if she would remember this conversation in the morning. She hadn't been sleeping well lately, he knew, but she'd seemed pretty conked out this evening when she'd gone to bed at eight thirty and been fast asleep by quarter to nine. "Is there something you want, because otherwise, you're creeping me out."

He felt a lump form at the back of his throat and to his horror, his eyes began to sting with unshed tears. It wasn't that he felt ashamed at her seeing him cry, although there was definitely the potential for that. Derek hadn't cried in he didn't even know how long, even in front of Addison, and even though he was in love with her, still, he wasn't ready to tell her that, or to let her get close enough to him by letting down his guard and letting her see him cry.

"No, I'm fine," he managed to croak, hoping that the semi-darkness in the room would hide his red-rimmed eyes that Addison seemed unfairly adept at picking up upon. There was a faint wobble in his voice, which he cursed himself for, and prayed that Addison wouldn't notice it. Which she would, of course, since she was Addison and knew him far too well for his own taste right now. She'd always been able to coax him into talking when no one else could, dating way back to when they were first dating and he'd unexpectedly gotten all teary-eyed on the anniversary of his dad's death and told her why. The first was surprising in itself, since while he hated that anniversary, he seldom cried and especially not in front of girls he was trying to impress, and second, Derek Shepherd just didn't talk about his feelings, period. He'd changed somewhat in that respect, knowing Addison, but then she had betrayed him and he'd gone right back to being closed off again. Life was just so much simpler and safer that way.

There was a pause, and Derek allowed himself to hope that his wife--and that was something else, why did his mind stubbornly insist on referring to her as his wife, instead of just Addison, or perhaps the bitch that cheated on him?--had taken him at his word and was going back to sleep, if she'd even fully waken up in the first place. Perhaps--hopefully--she had just been talking in her sleep and she wouldn't remember any of this absolutely mortifying (to him, that was, not to Addison) conversation.

There was something terribly wrong with this situation. He wanted to be back in New York, or perhaps another city that wasn't Los Angeles, out at a bar flirting with another woman. A blond, perhaps, who was younger than he was, and the anti-Addison. His young blonde would be wide-eyed and worship him for his skills as a brain surgeon, and think he was the second coming, the dreamiest guy she'd ever met. She wouldn't even consider cheating on him, she would be waiting for him to come home every night and her life would revolve around him. That would be just the boost his ego needed after the horrific sight of his wife in bed with another man. Yes, if he was smart then he would get the hell out of LA and find himself another woman who could appreciate what a catch he was.

Except he wasn't smart, he was stupid, and his brain stubbornly insisted that he was in love with Addison, as much as he would have liked the situation to be otherwise. He was in love with her, and he was terrified that something was going to happen to her and that he would lose her before he had the chance to tell her that. Which made no sense whatsoever, since there was nothing wrong with Addison apart from the fact that she was going to have a baby, and there was nothing stopping him from telling her that he loved her. Yet that was scary as hell as well, so he was stuck here, saying nothing because saying anything was too damn frightening for words.

It wasn't just Addison he was worried about either, he'd come to realize. He never would have believed it if someone had told him six months ago that he would come to love Addison's adulterous love child with Sam Bennett, but it wasn't the baby's fault, after all, and Derek had always wanted kids, and he was honestly looking forward to finally meeting the kid and doing all kinds of dad stuff with it. Addison had let him feel the baby's kicking, and shown him her ultrasound photos, and it had been a real thrill to find that the baby kicked hello when he talked to it. He didn't want anything to happen to the baby, and that made him doubly afraid as the days toward the delivery sped by.

"Derek?" Addison's voice was still blurry with sleep, but slightly more alert this time and he should have known that she wouldn't give up so easily. "Dammit, Derek, now I'm not going to be able to go back to sleep until you tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong," he tried to lie, knowing the second the words left his mouth that Addison would know they were false and come down on him like a ton of bricks. She hated it when he lied--in addition to the lying, she'd often told him, he was a shitty one and therefore assuming that she was stupid enough to believe it, which was doubly insulting. "I'm just tired, that's all."

"So tired that you're staring at me instead of going to sleep like a sane person would do?" Addison rolled over onto her side and propped herself up with an elbow, and although Derek couldn't see well enough in the dark to confirm it, he just *knew* that she was rolling her eyes at him. "Yeah, that's real believable, Derek. You almost had me going with that one."

Shit. Now she was onto the fact that something was wrong, and she wasn't going to give up until he either told her what it was or told a satisfactory lie, which, considering his previous attempt at a falsehood, he didn't have much chance at doing. Great. Just fucking fantastic.

"Fine, I can't sleep," he gave in, settling on a half, or more likely a quarter or eighth-truth. He doubted that Addison would buy his excuse of insomnia without wanting to know what was causing it, but it was worth a try, in any case.

"Thanks, Derek, that really illuminates things for me," Addison replied, and he could hear the sarcasm dripping from her voice. "You're awake because you can't sleep. I never would have been able to figure that one out by myself, so I'm really glad you told me."

"Well, I can't," he argued, hoping that he could distract her from the subject at hand. It was the second in his line of defense tactics, to distract her, and he was hoping he might have better luck, although it also seldom worked. He had a slightly better shot than with the lying, but not much. On the other hand, Addison still seemed like she was half-asleep, so she might actually believe him. Like he'd said, the chances were slim but not impossible that he would get away with it.

"Dammit, Derek, do you want to tell me what's wrong or do you want to sleep on the couch? Because you're really starting to piss me off." She sounded fed up, and Derek suddenly felt guilty for upsetting her. Even though he hadn't actually done anything, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with a guy having a little insomnia and watching his wife sleep in order to pass the time.

He wanted to tell her, ached to tell her, actually, but he couldn't seem to get the words to come out of his mouth. I'm scared, he wanted to say. I don't want to lose you. I love you. Lots of things he wanted to tell her, but couldn't find the courage to. He didn't know if he would ever be brave enough to let Addison get close to him again, but he also knew that he had to if he wanted the two of them to have any kind of future together. He'd done a lot of soul-searching, both back in New York and here in Los Angeles, and the one thing he'd come up with was that he was partly to blame for what happened to their marriage. Addison wouldn't have turned to Sam if Derek had been there for her, and it was entirely possible that their problems had begun because he'd shut her out and kept her at arms length from him

Addison was still waiting for a response and Derek wondered if she'd gone back to sleep when she spoke again, her voice hard and with a certain bitterness that made his heart sink. "Okay, fine, don't tell me. Sit in silence all you want, just don't keep me up."

"That's not passive-aggressive or anything," he snapped before he could help himself, and oh boy, was he in for it now. Now they were going to fight and Addison was going to cry and he didn't know what was wrong with him that he couldn't just tell his wife that he loved her instead of picking a huge fight with her in the middle of the night when they were both exhausted.

"Goddammit, Derek, what do you want?" Addison sounded absolutely exasperated and to his shame, he detected a hint of tears in her voice. Now he'd upset her, which he hadn't wanted to do, and she was going to get all worked up and that was bad for the baby. He was batting a thousand today, and he needed to stop being so stupid and start talking to her instead of picking on her and making her cry. "You wake me up, there's something that's obviously wrong with you but you don't want to share…you're shutting me out, which is okay, I get that, but it still hurts, Derek."

"Oh, Addie." The nickname escaped his lips before he could stop it and he caught his breath, feeling his heart pounding in his throat. He wished it was five years ago, or ten years ago, when their marriage was strong and they could read each other like no one else could. Addison had an uncanny ability to detect when something was wrong with him, but there had been a time when she'd been able to figure out what it was. Which wasn't fair, really, to expect her to do all the work and that was part of the problem as well. He'd gotten lazy, expecting Addison to put all the effort into their marriage, and it had most likely come across to her like he didn't give a damn. Which wasn't true at all, but he could see how it would appear as such.

"What's wrong, Derek?" Her voice was gentler now, and he felt her hand on his arm, her touch warm and reassuring. He gripped her hand in his and then pulled her into a hug, one arm draped around her waist. It was an awkward embrace, and he couldn't pull her as tightly into his arms as he would have liked because of the baby, but he rested his head on her shoulder and felt a little better, especially so when he felt a light butterfly movement beneath his palm. He'd felt the baby kicking before, but it seemed like the kid knew he was here and was trying to make him feel better. Which was silly, he knew, but it was reassuring all the same.

"Don't leave me," he managed to say, hoping that she wouldn't ask any more questions. He didn't want to have a huge in-depth discussion of his feelings--even in the days when their marriage had been rock solid, he still wasn't the type to sob on her shoulder and blurt out all the dark and twisty stuff that was inside of him. He didn't even want to talk so much as he just wanted to lie here with his head on Addison's shoulder, feeling her baby kick and knowing that they were both safe for now.

********

Sometimes Addison wondered why she even tried, since nothing she did seemed good enough. Yes, she'd fucked up, she would be the first one to admit that, but so had Derek and she was sick and fucking tired of always being the bad guy, the evil one who had gone around behind her sweet and devoted husband's back without any rhyme or reason. There were two sides to every story, if Derek hadn't practically neglected her for years, she wouldn't have been so lonely that she'd turned to someone else and she knew that wasn't an excuse and that it didn't erase what she did or how hurtful her actions were.

It was just tiring to keep trying and trying and have everything fall apart around her ears anyhow, and sometimes she wondered why the hell she bothered anymore. Well, she knew why she bothered--it was for her baby, and she wanted to create a warm and stable home life for him or her. It just seemed like it was so much work with hardly, if any results, and she was terrified that she was wasting her time and effort on something that just wasn't going to happen.

She wasn't even angry anymore so much as she was tired, and she just wanted this to be over and things to be smoothed out, without them coming up over and over again. She loved Derek and she wanted a life together with him, and she didn't know if that was possible with her having Sam's baby. It felt like she had to choose between her child and her husband, and she couldn't see how she could bear losing either one of them.

She didn't consider herself a bad person, but looking at the evidence, she could see how she might be construed as one. She'd cheated on her husband, for one, and not just cheated but gotten pregnant with the other man's child. She was keeping the adulterous love child (although this was something she'd never debated, regardless of how much she might have regretted its conception, she wasn't going to punish an innocent child for her mistakes), and she'd had the audacity to show up in Los Angeles just when Sam and Naomi were finally starting to put their life together back together.

She needed to talk to Naomi about all of this, and she didn't know how. There was still so much conflict and damage and hurt in their relationship that Addison was afraid that they would never recover, that the damage was permanent. She didn't want to lose her friend--she and Naomi went way back, and had gotten each other though some really rough times, and it hurt to think of not having her in her life anymore. Well, not so much the case that they never saw each other again--they would always be in each others lives as long as Naomi and Sam were together--but their relationship was different now, polite and formal instead of warm and Addison didn't even know what else. She missed how things used to be, but understood that the way things used to be was based on her not having slept with Sam.

So she paced, too antsy to sleep as she lied awake nights and tried to figure out how she'd gotten into this mess and what she could do to get out of it. She wasn't having much luck with the latter--the harder she tried, it seemed, the worse things seemed to get. Not that they were outright bad right now--she and Naomi were talking, and when they stuck to casual stuff then it was all fine and good, but the moment they started to get into anything personal, Naomi just shut down. Which Addison could understand--she wouldn't be so eager to trust someone who had betrayed her on that level--but she still missed their friendship, felt like she should mourn the death of something that was over and at the same time didn't want to give up when there was a tiny sliver of hope left.

She missed her friend, and she didn't have anyone she could talk to anymore. She couldn't talk to Sam or Derek about Sam or Derek, and even though she was in love with Derek and cared about Sam an awful lot, she didn't have the same relationship with them as she did--had--she didn't even know anymore, with Naomi.

It was just so tricky, this going along and trying not to fuck things up along the way. She would go along and everything would be fine, then she would make one tiny little mistake and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. Every mistake would lead to another would lead to another until she had burnt everything down and was sifting in the ashes in some vain hope that not everything had been destroyed in the fire.

Every once in a while she might find something that had survived, some tiny thing she could use to rebuild things, but that followed along the same old pattern, where everything would go fine for a while and then it would all come falling down again. She wanted to pull herself out of that cycle, she had to pull herself out of that cycle but it seemed like it was taking so long and she kept stumbling over and over again and she was afraid that either pulling herself out wasn't possible or else it would take so long that by the time she did, she would have nothing left.

Which was all incredibly emo of her, she knew, and she didn't know why she kept falling into this pattern of thinking when she was constantly swearing that she wouldn't do it anymore. Maybe she was just an emo person, or unable to see the positive in things. There were lots of positives in her life, if she chose to look at them instead of dwelling on the negatives.

There was the fact that Derek was here, for one, instead of across the country in New York celebrating having gotten her out of his life, good riddance to bad rubbish and all that sort of thing. She'd offered him an out, she'd signed divorce papers and sent them to him, and instead of signing them and having that be that, he'd come to LA to find her and try to start a new life together. He hadn't actually said as such, but they were living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, having sex, driving together to where they worked at the same hospital--if that wasn't trying to start a new life together, Addison didn't know what was.

The days were moving quickly by now, and she didn't quite know where they went. There was work, of course, surgeries and consults and everything else that she could do in her sleep. There were the doctors appointments for her as well, and the whatever it was that her relationship with Derek was becoming. He still didn't want to talk about her affair with Sam, but he came to her doctors appointments with her and had even gone along with her to buy baby clothes, and bought a tiny pair of overalls that he insisted wouldn't be too masculine if her baby turned out to be a girl.

Sam still wasn't talking to her, and Addison felt horrible about that. She hadn't been thinking about his feelings when she'd told Derek that he could adopt her baby, and she should have. She should have thought about what he wanted, that he was excited about being a father again, even if he'd been a little slow off the mark showing it. This was his child, she would have been livid if Sam had agreed to let Naomi adopt her baby without even consulting her. There was something so awful in being asked to sign away your parental rights, Addison had realized, and she'd tried to apologize, but Sam wasn't wanting to have any part of it, it seemed.

She'd been furious with Derek at first, at the way he'd walked into Sam's office and dropped the papers on his desk, but she'd come to realize that she was more angry with herself than with him. She should have talked to Sam first, and she didn't know why she didn't. She'd just been so shocked and happy when Derek had asked to adopt her baby, and touched that he had come to care about her child so much that he wanted to raise it as his own. She wanted them to be a family, her and Derek and the baby, and the adoption seemed like the perfect solution for all of them.

Her baby already had a father, though, and Sam was a good man and a good dad to Maya. He wanted to be involved, even though Addison suspected that Naomi had talked him into it. He had definitely been reluctant when she'd told him she was pregnant, and she'd had the distinct impression that he wished she would just go back to New York where he could send child support and visit once or twice a year.

She wondered what would have happened if she'd stayed in New York--it hadn't seemed like an option at the time, given how Derek had thrown her out, and she'd been too heartbroken to find another place. Everything there would have reminded her of him, and it just seemed easier to make a clean break and head out to Seattle. It seemed like the perfect solution at the time, getting away from Sam and Derek both, but then she had missed her period and everything caught up with her all over again.

She and Derek might have been able to make it work, though, if she'd stayed. Derek got angry, yes, but he tended to calm down after a couple of days, and it was possible that they could have gotten to a place where he was ready to see her and talk about what had happened. She didn't think things would have been any easier for them--she was under no false illusions that everything would have been sunshine and rainbows and puppies if she'd just stayed in New York--but if they could have talked, things might have turned out differently.

Or maybe not, since she still would have been pregnant with Sam's baby, and honestly, she would have been terrified to tell him. Derek had wanted children for so long and it would have been horrible to tell him that she was going to become a mother, but he wouldn't be the father. It would have been cruel and he would have been crushed, and even though she'd been upset at the time, she was grateful in the long run that Naomi had done it for her.

Regardless, the past was the past and the present was the present, and the future was fast approaching. When she'd found out she was pregnant, she had been absolutely petrified, but had consoled herself with the thought that she would have everything figured out by the time the baby was ready to be born. Six months had passed since then, she was eight months pregnant, and she still didn't know anything. She didn't know what to do, she didn't feel ready, and here she was about to bring her son or daughter into the world without knowing anything about how to be a good mother.

She needed to make peace with Sam, for one. Derek was asking her to press Sam about the adoption, but Addison didn't think Sam was going to change his mind, and she didn't want to make things any worse between them. Naomi had been decidedly cool toward her as well, which Addison could understand, but she honestly hadn't meant to hurt either Sam or Naomi and she didn't know what to do to make things better.

Well, actually, she did know. She had to tell Derek that he couldn't adopt the baby, even though part of her wanted that, so much. Her child had a father, though, who wanted to be involved in his or her life, and Addison couldn't justify denying her child that, even though she was still in love with Derek and wanted to make him happy. She didn't look forward to telling him no, he couldn't adopt, but there wasn't really any way around it. He would have to be content with being a stepfather, and no, she wasn't looking forward to that conversation at all.

It had to be done, though, because it wasn't just about her anymore. She had her baby to think about, and her child was going to come first from here on out. Sam would be a good dad, if his relationship with Maya was anything to go by, (although that had been strained for a while, but that was understandable and things were improving, Naomi had reported), and she just wasn't in a position to deny her son or daughter a loving father. And while Derek wouldn't be the father biologically or legally, he could still be a second father figure, if he wanted to be. That had been a big if at one time, and while Derek had bonded with the baby since then, she was still afraid that he would walk away if he was hurt again over this. Their marriage had been through so much already, and she didn't know how much more strain it could take before something broke permanently.

*******

Derek came home from work to find Addison waiting for him, sitting back in his easy chair (funny to think how he'd only been here three months and he was already thinking of the chair as his and to a lesser extent, the house as theirs) and holding a book, one hand placed on her stomach as she read. She looked up when he came in the door, her expression undoubtedly nervous, and he just *knew* that she was about to tell him something that she didn't want to tell, which tended to mean that it was something he didn't want to hear.

"What is it?" he asked, deciding to bite the bullet and get it over with. He dropped his briefcase by the hall table and took off his coat, looking over at her before turning his attention to hanging the garment in the coat closet. "You look like you want to talk about something. That's definitely the 'we have to talk' face."

Addison sighed, and Derek wished she wouldn't look so afraid. It bothered him, that his wife was afraid of him, and he wondered how much of it had to do with that ugly scene after he'd found her in bed with Sam. He shouldn't have dragged her out of the house that way--it was hurtful and just not the kind of person he wanted to be, let alone the kind of husband Addison deserved.

"Yeah, I guess you can say that we need to talk." Addison ran a hand through her hair, the way she always did when she was anxious about something. Derek had an idea of what it might be--Addison had been evasive lately on the topic of him adopting her child--but it could be something else and either way, he wasn't wildly excited to hear what she had to say. "I'm sorry, Derek, but the adoption…it's not going to happen. Sam won't give up his parental rights and I just…I don't know what to tell you other than that I'm sorry."

Derek nodded slowly, digesting what she had just told him. To be honest, the news didn't come as a huge shock, but he was still disappointed, very much so. He'd come to love the baby, which was a bigger surprise to him than to anyone else, given how upset and hurt he'd been at the news of Addison's pregnancy. It wasn't his child, but it was Addison's, and he was surprised at how much he wanted all of them to be a family.

"Did you try talking to him?" Derek wanted to know, figuring that she would say yes, she had, but he had to say *something* and that was as good as anything else. Better than most things he wanted to say, actually, so yes, asking if she'd talked to Sam about it worked just fine and dandy for him. "Or maybe I should try, although he and I don't tend to have the best conversations, so that might not work so well. I can make an effort, though, and see what happens."

Addison shook her head slowly, biting on her lip nervously. "I don't really think that's going to help, Derek. Sam seems to have his mind made up, and he's not going to sign any papers giving away his rights to our child."

Derek tried not to wince at her words, the 'our child' and the way she so casually referred to her and Sam's offspring. It might sound juvenile of him, but he couldn't help feeling jealous and excluded by that. It ruined his fantasy of the baby being his, his and Addison's and he just didn't know how to get past that. The adoption seemed like the perfect solution, but now Addison was telling him it wasn't going to happen and Derek just didn't know what to do about that.

"So you're just going along with what Sam wants, then?" His words sounded harsh and ugly in his ears, and he hadn't realized just how disappointed he was before now. It was just as he'd feared, Sam and Addison were going to be playing happy family while he was on the outside looking in. Sam would always have a place in Addison's life because he was the father of her child, and Derek just didn't know how he felt about that. "It's good to know where your priorities lie."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Addison shot back, now looking as hurt and angry as she felt. It didn't give him as much satisfaction as he'd thought it would--actually, he felt like a first-class shit, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. He hadn't realized how much he'd wanted this adoption, to actually be a dad to Addison's child instead of its mother's husband, or a stepfather or maybe even nothing at all. It was like a cruel twist on his dream of a family with Addison, and it was official now--Sam was in and Derek was out.

"How hard did you try to convince him?" Derek wanted to know, unable to stop himself. Everything was boiling up to the surface, all the hurt and anger and everything else from the moment he'd walked in on the love of his life in bed with a man who he'd thought was his friend. "Did you tell him I'd be a good dad, that I would love your child as if it were my own? Did you tell him you wanted us to be a family, you and me and the baby? Or didn't you tell him because that's not what you want after all?"

"That's not fair," Addison protested, tears springing to her eyes. Just great, another reminder that he was a complete shit to his wife and didn't know how to treat women well. Now he'd made her cry, and the stress wouldn't be good for the baby, and he didn't know why he kept on making things worse and worse. "I want us to be a family, I really do. I want that more than anything, but I can't make Sam give up his rights and isn't adoption just a piece of paper anyhow? It doesn't mean that we can't be a family."

"It obviously doesn't matter if it's a piece of paper or not, since you didn't seem to want it that much," Derek shot back, unable to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. He was feeling stupid and embarrassed, and wishing that he'd never brought up the subject of adoption in the first place. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you in the first place. Is it too late to forget that I brought up the topic at all?"

"Derek, that's not what I meant," Addison pleaded, the tears now flowing out of her eyes and down her cheeks. Her makeup was running along with them, creating two black streaks down her face and she must have realized how she looked because she started to get up, straining to get out of the chair and to her feet. Without thinking, Derek moved to help her, offering her his arm to hold onto as she pulled herself up into a standing position.

"Thank you," she whispered, still crying silently. She reached for a Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes before wadding it up and tossing it in the wastepaper basket. "I'm really sorry, Derek, and I'm disappointed too. I wish this was all different, I really do, but I can't see Sam changing his mind."

"No," Derek agreed slowly, shaking his head. He supposed he wouldn't like that request so much either, if the situation were reversed and Sam was wanting to adopt Derek's child with Addison. He wouldn't let anyone talk him out of his parental rights, but wasn't this a different situation? Sam wasn't in love with Addison, and now he was more confused than anything else.

"Are you hungry?" Addison wanted to know, offering a change of subject as a peace offering. She'd stopped crying, although she had to take another Kleenex to blow her nose, and she still looked red-eyed and black-cheeked. "I made lasagna, if you are."

"I'm a little hungry, yeah," Derek agreed, managing a small smile. He wasn't feeling all that much like eating, to be honest, but he didn't want to fight with Addison anymore, or have to think about how disappointed he was, and eating would provide a distraction, not to mention that Addison was a pretty fantastic cook when she set her mind to it. Eating lasagna would be a lot better than dwelling on the failed adoption and his fears of Sam and Addison living happily ever after together.

*******

The closer Addison's delivery date came, the more uncertain Naomi became about whether she was capable of handling it. She knew it was pointless to worry, since the baby would be born regardless of whether she was ready or not. It wasn't anything that was up to her, and she knew she had to be okay with the baby if she wanted any kind of future with Sam--regardless of her hurt feelings, the child was going to be Maya's half-sibling, if nothing else, and that meant it was going to be a part of her life. It would be much better for everyone involved if she could get past her jealousy and insecurities and be a bigger person.

In spite of her good intentions, though, she'd found herself pulling away from Addison in recent months, canceling plans with weak excuses, or avoiding her phone calls. The bigger Addison got, the less Naomi wanted to be around her, and she knew that wasn't fair, that she'd promised Addison that they would work on their friendship in return for the other woman staying in California. It had been Naomi's idea in the first place that Addison stay, so why was she being this way now? It was too late to change her mind, and she couldn't exactly tell Addison that she had to go to New York because no, she wasn't able to handle that after all.

Avoiding Addison was easier to say than to do, though, since the fact that the other woman lived next door to her husband made it almost impossible to avoid her. She'd actually resorted to hiding inside the house one day when she was home alone and she'd seen Addison heading over toward the front door. She'd physically crouched beneath the windowsill, and that was just beyond pathetic. She was a grown woman, she had hidden like a child, and she needed to come to terms with the pregnancy, the sooner, the better.

She also had to sort things out with Addison and Maya, and preferably soon. Her daughter had been devastated by her father's affair and she'd refused any attempts Naomi had made to discuss her feelings on the situation, or her soon-to-be-born half-sibling. All she'd said was that the baby was nothing to her and she didn't care what happened to it, as long as she wasn't asked to babysit it because she wouldn't do it, ever. Really.

Naomi sighed, knowing what she needed to do. Addison was bound to notice how evasive she was being, if she hadn't already, which was a distinct possibility. Addison was any number of things, but stupid wasn't among them, and just because things weren't the same between them anymore didn't mean that her friend (were they still friends? Naomi couldn't seem to make up her mind about that) was any less perceptive. Almost twenty years of friendship didn't just go away overnight, as much as she wished it, sometimes.

She came home one day to find Addison sitting in her living room, a blanket wrapped around the other woman and her lower lip trembling. Naomi froze for a moment, not knowing how to react. She figured Addison had let herself in with the key under the mat, which seemed a little odd and invasive, but it seemed so un-Addison that Naomi's first reaction was to worry that something was wrong, really wrong. Breaking and entering just didn't seem Addison at all.

She hesitated, not knowing what to say. She wished the right words would come into her head, except that she didn't know what said rights words were, since she didn't know what was wrong or what the situation was and she supposed that asking Addison might be the first step in figuring out what the hell was going on.

"I'm scared," Addison blurted out, her voice wobbling slightly. "I'm going to have a baby and it's going to hurt and then I'm going to have this little person who's always going to *be* there, who I'm going to be responsible for for the rest of my life. I can't do this, Nai, I don't think I can do this."

Naomi felt a rush of sympathy for the other woman--she remembered feeling exactly that way, right before she was about to have Maya. The responsibilities of parenthood had completely overwhelmed her and there wasn't any way she could see herself measuring up to the daunting task. It still scared the hell out of her, when she thought about it too much, but Maya was thirteen now and mostly okay, apart from the fiasco that was Sam and Addison's affair, so Naomi figured that she must be okay at the parenting thing, apart from the fact that her daughter was crushed by her father's infidelity. So no, Maya wasn't exactly what you would call okay, and that meant God knew what about her parenting skills.

"Having a baby, you mean?" Naomi asked, although she already knew the answer to the question. Addison nodded miserably and Naomi came over and sat down beside her on the couch. She still didn't know what she was going to say except to share her own experiences. She was glad that she was able to do this, and hoped that it would be helpful. She could do that much for Addison, at least, and maybe this meant that she was more okay with the upcoming birth than she'd given herself credit for.

"How did you do it with Maya?" Addison wanted to know. "I mean, you got through labor and you've raised her for thirteen years and she's a pretty fantastic kid, so you have to have some secrets about child-rearing that you can share with me. How do you do it? I'm so scared that I'm going to break it or let it down and here I am, calling my child an it. What does that say about me as a mother, Nai? Nothing good, I'm sure."

"Hey." Naomi took Addison by the shoulders, holding the other woman in place as she looked into her eyes, trying to calm her down and convey the sincerity of her words. "I was a basket case before Maya was born and honestly, it still scares the hell out of me to think about what a huge responsibility it is to be a parent. All I can tell you is that yes, the labor is going to hurt and yes, it's hard as anything to raise a child, but it's also a pretty wonderful feeling when you see this little baby grow up to be her own person. I wish I knew how to put it into words, but it feels fantastic."

"I hope you're right," Addison sighed, placing her hands on her stomach and looking sad. "For this child's sake, I hope I can get my act together and be a good parent."


End file.
